Fair Game movie review

by Rick Grant
This brilliantly acted and written film chronicles Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joe’s struggle to regain credibility and stop the White House smear tactics after Scooter Libby planted a story with Robert Novak that outed Valerie as a high ranking CIA agent.
In director Doug Liman’s evenly paced scenario, Naomi Watts skillfully portrays Valerie Plame Wilson and Sean Penn plays her husband Joe.
The script, based on known facts, shows that prior to the blast off of the Iraq war, the W. Bush White House was pressuring the CIA to substantiate the administration’s contention that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and nuclear capabilities.
A supervising agent named Valerie Plame Wilson was running covert ops inside Iraq. Her on-the-ground intelligence revealed that first, Hussein’s nuclear program was obliterated during the first Gulf War. And, his chemical weapons had been depleted during his massacre of the ethnic people in Northern Iraq.
Valerie and her bosses had already briefed the White House on this intelligence. However, the Bush-Cheney end-game was to take out Saddam Hussein to restore access to Iraq’s vast oil production.
The Bush-Cheney cabal wanted confirmation to justify invading Iraq, and they wouldn’t accept the CIA’s initial intelligence. If they didn’t get the right answers from the CIA, their contingency plan was to lie to the American people.
When Joe went public, appearing on various talk shows and news programs, and decided to fight the White House, the Wilsons were in danger and could have been murdered.
Since the story went viral and Joe was relentless in defending Valerie and his actions as Ambassador to Niger, the White House pinned the snafu on Scooter Libby who was the designated fall guy. He went to prison.
Fair Game is a riveting movie that will have audiences talking long after they leave the theater.