Fair Game

Over and above its success as a political thriller and as an exposé of the chronic duplicity of the Bush administration, the value of Fair Game is the way in which it explores the corrupting nature of power, the need to resist it and the ordinary citizen’s responsibility to do so.  As an impassioned plea for people to live a moral life, even at a material cost, Fair Game has much to recommend it. That in its closing stages it reduces this to sloganeering is unfortunate but does not take away from its main achievement, which is to remind us that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Director Doug “The Bourne Identity“ Liman and screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth have crafted a engrossing thriller from the books The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson and Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson to tell the couple’s story. Penn, well known for his real-life activism, and well-experienced with films of commitment is a perfect choice for Joe Wilson, a decent guy who doesn’t take to being used by the people he has tried to help. Watts is equally strong as his wife, one heck of a cool cucumber, trained for nearly two decades to keep a low profile and who has no appetite for confrontation. The film tracks both the political shenanigans they found themselves involved in and the stress on their marriage once Joe blows the whistle. Liman and his writers keep the proceedings so pumped, including a lot of  unnecessary wobblecam, that it is hard at times to believe this is not a fictional story. That it’s not, filmic glamourization aside, makes it all the more remarkable

The script tends at times to be a tad expositional as it wades through the various characters involved and that hectoring ending with Penn giving us the moral of the story was a real bad call, but otherwise Fair Game is an above-average adult drama with a message that is applicable to us all..

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