Fair Game

The filmmaker who launched the Bourne franchise, director Doug Liman takes on a real-life tale of espionage with his engaging adaptation of Valerie Plame's memoir, Fair Game. When her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson, penned an op-ed in mid-2003 that repudiated the Bush administration's assertion that Iraq posed an imminent threat by harboring nuclear weapons, White House official Lewis "Scooter" Libby leaked Plame's undercover CIA status to the national media. Naomi Watts displays a startling intelligence as Plame, and her anguish over being forced to abandon her career and face a hostile government is heart-wrenching. In a brilliant piece of casting, Sean Penn's public persona adds dimension to his role as Plame's firebrand husband, who demands accountability and justice. Though Libby (played by David Andrews) is eventually indicted, his token reprimand does little to dispel their frustration with an administration willing to do whatever it takes to get whatever it wants. Liman's jumpy handheld camerawork and fast-paced dialogue, along with actual footage of Bush-era officials, are uncomfortably real, and add to the film's raw emotional impact. Fair Game is not so much a political thriller as it is a bureaucratic nightmare, as Plame and Wilson slowly realize they are in the crosshairs of the most powerful men in the world.