Fair Game

Rating: 8

Genre: Mature Audience, Drama

Starring: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn

Joe Wilson, a former diplomat, was recruited by the CIA for a special mission to Niger in 2002 to determine if that country was supplying Iraq with materials to build up Iraq’s nuclear program,. He reported that he did not think supplies were being sent. The Bush administration chose to ignore his report. Outraged, Wilson wrote an op-ed piece that was widely quoted. In retaliation, certain people within the administration leaked the news that Valarie Plame (Watts), Wilson’s wife, was a CIA operative. She suddenly was thrust into the spotlight as being involved with her husband’s mission to Niger in some undetermined way. As a result, she was put in dry dock by the CIA, thus compromising her previous covert activities. At this point the movie shifts from the political to the personal, as it portrays the tension within the family. Many will see this movie as just another Hollywood hatchet job on the Bush administration. If so, they will miss the drama of a very good movie.


PS on Dec 9, 2010, an op-ed piece in the Wall Street journal was written by Judith Miller who says the movie contains a number of omissions & half truths with respect to the Plame-Wilson affair. Miller is a commentator for Fox News. She went to jail in 2005 to protect the identity of a confidential source who spoke to her about Plame.