Movie Review: Fair Game

Rating: 3.5/5

Prepare to be outraged by this political drama, based on the autobiography of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. Should you not be intimately acquainted with "the Plame affair", it's not giving away much to say that Plame (Naomi Watts) and her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), get on the wrong side of a Bush administration intent on ignoring the evidence that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

Fair Game could do with fewer good-guy, bad-guy stereotypes and more of the informant family abandoned in Iraq. But the portrait of an imploding marriage and Penn's superb performance lift this from a turgid leftie thriller to one worth watching whatever your political creed. Judge for yourself who's telling the truth in the real-world scrap over the film's accuracy.

Rated: M
Running time: 107 minutes

Out Thursday.

- Herald On Sunday / View