Films with political agendas walk a dangerous line between crafting a compelling narrative and mounting a soapbox to preach to the masses some message of scandal or outrage that should be abhorred. Often the films spring from a filmmaker’s own personal bent and desire to raise a point, but sometimes the story being told can’t help but evoke questions that force us to take a second hard look at the events in question. Director Doug Liman’s films run from meandering comedies (Swingers) to adrenaline ride action flicks (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and now include a political drama ripped from the headlines (pardon the cliché), Fair Game. Whether or not you paid attention to the very public and fiery political crash of former spy Valerie Plame and her politician husband Joseph C. Wilson, Liman delivers a film that captivates and keeps the audience’s attention firmly focused on the characters, only wavering slightly depending on the individual viewer’s attention span for all matters political.
After planes struck the Twin Towers and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, government organizations ran amok with activity attempting to ascertain who was to blame and what should be done next. In the months that followed, supposed evidence arose leading to an invasion of Iraq. How does Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) play in to this? She was one of the spies on the ground in various countries and the head liaison for Iraqi scientist contacts in the CIA’s efforts to determine the nuclear capabilities of Iraq. Both Valerie and her husband Joseph (Sean Penn) go abroad to help solidify American intel in the matter, and yet, despite everything they know to be true, the United States goes to war over purported Iraqi materials for the creation of weapons of mass destruction. In a rage, Joseph writes a scalding letter to one of the nation’s leading papers resulting in the outing of his wife’s identity in a response piece that drives Joseph and Valerie to antipodes of the political spectrum as they struggle with their own personal sensibilities of loyalty, both to the government they’ve served and the family they’ve created.
For the first two thirds, Fair Game is an uncompromising political film with a rock-hard foundation in human drama. Joseph and Valerie appear as distinctly different characters in their temperaments and motivations. The stroke that changes their lives forever, Joseph’s letter, comes from a place equally rooted in self-advancement and unflinching adherence to an ideal of government transparency. He gradually grows from the emasculated political figure clearly overshadowed by his wife’s superior level of career secrecy into a mouthpiece for bureaucratic accountability. In this, it’s remarkably impressive how Joseph, despite being the character who incites the article that ruins his wife’s career and unwittingly costs a few Iraqi scientists their lives, seems to be the one we’re asked to side with in the end, because for whatever reason Valerie’s resentment of her husband for the runaway train he drove through her life is a shameful response. Fair Game postulates that Joseph’s cause was the just one and that Valerie somehow overreacted to what started as Joseph’s self-serving article and progressed to stints on daytime television and news programs. It may follow their true story, but the unmistakably disapproving tone towards Valerie’s anger towards Joseph for “doing the right thing” feels wrong, and is only compounded by the film’s final third where Joseph goes on a public speaking rampage against government cover-ups.
This is where the film ceases to feel like a narrative and resembles a Sean Penn rant about 9/11 conspiracies and Iraqi troop withdrawals, topics he’d been hammering into the public consciousness before starring in Fair Game. The film suffers from the preachy closing act, perhaps irreparably, and you can’t help but think that an otherwise solid drama got torpedoed by an actor’s insistence that he be allowed to take to a soapbox to close it out. Fair Game is the perfect example of an actor’s political aspirations threatening the quality of a solid film by cheapening the hard-earned drama with a heavy-handed message.
"Fair Game" opens November 5, 2010 and is rated PG13. Drama. Directed by Doug Liman. Written by Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth (screenplay), Joseph Wilson (book), Valerie Plame (book). Starring Naomi Watts, Noah Emmerich, Sean Penn, Ty Burrell.
