3/5
“If I’m the White House and I shout a thousand times louder than you, does that make me right? They lied! That’s the truth!” Fair Game is a liberal attack on the Bush administration told through a true story. As a film, it’s pretty good. The plot is confusing to follow, but it basically sums up to the fact that the Bush administration decided to war to with Iraq without justified cause. The government desperately struggled to find an excuse to invade Iraq, telling the world that there were WMDs, when in fact there wasn’t any real evidence to support this.
Going into the cinema without knowing the true story behind the film might help you follow along the suspense, but the plot will be confusing. Valarie Plame (Naomi Watts, King Kong) is a CIA agent. Her husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) writes a report in the New York Times that states that he has been to Niger, and that the evidence of the presence of WMDs is a complete lie and that the White House lied to justify the invasion of Iraq. After this, Plame’s identity and status as an agent is revealed, putting herself and her family in danger. Together her and her husband try to fight back against the White House by informing people and using her story to explain the lies the White House told the public.
The acting is good. Sean Penn puts a good amount of life into his character and acts the part well. His character Joe knows things about the world that his neighbors can’t fathom. This causes him to burst at many dinner parties during political debates. Naomi Watts is fine. She seems a little bland at the beginning, but you realize she is acting the part quite well by the end.
Fair Game is put together well, incorporating videos from actual speeches by Bush, Rice, Powell, and Cheney. This makes the movie feel much more real, which it should as it is based on a true story. The cinematography, direction and music are all quite standard for a political-spy movie. I think that the movie could have been handled a little differently than the usual off-the-rack genre film as it could have incorporated even more aspects of real life, blending the line between fact and fiction.
“If I’m the White House and I shout a thousand times louder than you, does that make me right? They lied! That’s the truth!” Fair Game is a liberal attack on the Bush administration told through a true story. As a film, it’s pretty good. The plot is confusing to follow, but it basically sums up to the fact that the Bush administration decided to war to with Iraq without justified cause. The government desperately struggled to find an excuse to invade Iraq, telling the world that there were WMDs, when in fact there wasn’t any real evidence to support this.
Going into the cinema without knowing the true story behind the film might help you follow along the suspense, but the plot will be confusing. Valarie Plame (Naomi Watts, King Kong) is a CIA agent. Her husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) writes a report in the New York Times that states that he has been to Niger, and that the evidence of the presence of WMDs is a complete lie and that the White House lied to justify the invasion of Iraq. After this, Plame’s identity and status as an agent is revealed, putting herself and her family in danger. Together her and her husband try to fight back against the White House by informing people and using her story to explain the lies the White House told the public.
The acting is good. Sean Penn puts a good amount of life into his character and acts the part well. His character Joe knows things about the world that his neighbors can’t fathom. This causes him to burst at many dinner parties during political debates. Naomi Watts is fine. She seems a little bland at the beginning, but you realize she is acting the part quite well by the end.
Fair Game is put together well, incorporating videos from actual speeches by Bush, Rice, Powell, and Cheney. This makes the movie feel much more real, which it should as it is based on a true story. The cinematography, direction and music are all quite standard for a political-spy movie. I think that the movie could have been handled a little differently than the usual off-the-rack genre film as it could have incorporated even more aspects of real life, blending the line between fact and fiction.