Fair Game

6 / 10

2010.  US.  Starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts

In short: …meh

Fair Game is the film adaptation of the real-life political-intelligence saga known as ‘Plamegate’, the ‘Valerie Plame Affair’ or the ‘CIA leak scandal’.  Targeted at a US public which has already lived  through several years of complete media-saturation surrounding CIA operative Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and her former US Ambassador husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), this film may need a bit of preliminary background research for the non-gringo.  In fact, the film’s entire raison d’être (the leaking of Valerie Plame’s true identity) is almost taken as assumed knowledge; a mere trigger for Penn’s grandstanding rather than a key plot element.

The film is directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), so it’s no surprise that the best scenes are those involving 007 skulduggery in places like Niamey (apparently that’s the capital of Niger) and Kuala Lumpur.  They crackle with the energy of two real people doing cool jobs in crazy places.  A quick power-lunch with Niger’s former mining minister?  Sure.  Coerce a suspected arms trafficker’s nephew into becoming an informant?  Why not?

But the film also stars Sean Penn, so it’s no surprise that the worst scenes are those which he hijacks with an almost animalistic lack of self-control reminiscent of the embarrassingly drunk uncle at a wedding.  The worst such scene comes near the end, where a speech he gives at a university turns into a sort of ‘yes we can’ pep rally, replete with sweeping camera shots and dirt-cheesy music.  It is presented as the film’s dramatic, orgasmic climax, but the only person climaxing is Penn.  The scene is like someone spilling orange juice on your pants.

That being said, Penn and Watts are both at their best in this film when they portray two human beings struggling to cope as the consequences of their outed professional lives start crashing into their imperfect suburban dream.  Some right-wing nut bursts into Wilson’s business lunch and accuses him of treason, prompting shock, hurt and outrage capably channelled by Penn.  Plame’s previously innocent, almost escapist conversations with her soccer-mum friends are now peppered with their gawking questions: ‘did you kill anyone?!’  Watts perfectly captures Plame’s utterly human reaction: she understands their obsession with her previously secret life, but is hurt by their inability to subjugate the satisfaction of their curiosity to the support of their fragile friend.

Fair Game offers a refreshingly human portrait of the CIA, and governments in general.  No giant TV screens showing live satellite images of terrorists sipping lattes in Marrakesh. No swiss-army cars.  Just offices, work-booths, filing cabinets and bureaucrats.  It nicely, but subtly, supports one of the overall messages of film: that governments, including their intelligence agencies, aren’t machines.  They’re made up of people who make mistakes.

I respect this film for tackling such an important issue, but that doesn’t mean I particularly like it.  My verdict?  Meh.

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Dicker enjoys watching movies and eating duck.
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