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Capone says that when the story stays focused on Valerie Plame, Doug Liman's FAIR GAME is a gripping drama!!!
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I was wracking my brain trying to think of films where Naomi Watts' presence actually made the film better. She's fine actress, I accept that. But it's only in the hands of some really powerful directors where she really gets inspired to rise above her beauty and above-average talent to really soar. One of those times was opposite Sean Penn in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2003 film 21 GRAMS (she also did good work with Penn in the little-seen THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON a year later). In later works with David Cronenberg (EASTERN PROMISES) and Michael Haneke (FUNNY GAMES), she's also impressed me more than she usually does, but so often she feels like a beautiful, capable placeholder. In her third collaboration with Penn, director Doug Liman's FAIR GAME, Watts plays real-life CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose role as a spy was revealed in 2003 by a vengeful Bush administration who was out to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson (Penn). Wilson was among the first to call bullshit (with evidence to support him) on the administration's position that going into Iraq was necessarily because of an alleged nuclear program going on in that nation.
What Liman (SWINGERS, GO, MR. & MRS. SMITH, THE BOURNE IDENTITY) does extraordinarily well is establish just how valuable Plame's role in the CIA really was before she was unceremoniously excised from the organization when her identity was leaked in a story in The Wall Street Journal. Some news outlets were fed stories (thanks to Karl Rove's smear troopers) that Plame was a non-essential agent or simply a secretary in the agency, neither of which were true. Plame was a major investigator into the presence of WMD, and her husband was asked to consult about the possibility that Iraq was bringing in bomb components through Africa (his area of expertise). And when the President announced the nation was going to war anyway, Plame did her duty and kept her mouth shut; Wilson did not.
The second half of FAIR GAME is a little less focused, but no less compelling. Plame keeps her mouth shut while her reputation and that of her husband is trashed, because that's what she was taught to do in her job. Arguments erupt between the couple as the strain gets more pronounced. At times it seems that Penn is almost overcompensating in his performance for Watts' more dialed-back portrayal of Plame, but it's tough to find fault with Sean Penn as an actor, so you just sit back and watch him gesture and scream a lot. Plame seeks advice from her stoic father (Sam Shepard), and eventually the never-ending media attention wears her down, and she decides to take action.
The film, perhaps too succinctly, makes Scooter Libby (played by David Andrews) the scapegoat for all Bush administration's bad behavior, but I suppose that's pretty much what the White House did to the guy and it's why he got convicted ultimately (only to have his jail time commuted by Bush). But as it should be, the focus of FAIR GAME remains on Plame, Wilson and their family. There are perhaps a few too many speeches and declarations of loyalty to each other at the end of the movie, but by that point, a heartbreaking story has already been told. In the end, our hearts go out to Plame, a patriotic government worker who wanted to gather the best intelligence and assist her country however she could. The film ends with video of the real Valerie Plame testifying during a Congressional investigation concerning her ordeal, and it's wise and necessary to hear from from the victim at this point, and remember that this all happened to a real person.
FAIR GAME tends to wander a bit too often from Plame's story to Wilson, but since the mud slinging hit both of them, there's not really a way around that. There's just something that struck me as a bit more tragic about Plame's situation, and Watts steps up once again to capture her desperation to keep both her family and reputation intact. This is solid work from everyone involved.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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Looking forward!
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Hollywood is still making anti-Bush movies? Seriously? Oh yeah, this is Sean Penn, after all.
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Hollywood is still making anti-Bush movies? Seriously? Oh yeah, this is Sean Penn, after all.
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For anyone who is even interested in this story read Christopher Hitchens take on the affair. Hollywood hits every stereotype out of the park in making a film like this.
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..this is going to tank, big time. No one gave a damn back when it was a "story" and no one sure as hell cares now. No wonder they're dumping it this time of year.
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from Mr. Liman, Cap? I won't see it if he did everything handheld.
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This just seems to be an exceptionally vile, nasty part of American history. A CIA agent outed to START a war because her husband spoke the truth. If it was any other country, the perpatrators would be buried so far under Leavenworth they'd never see daylight again. Instead, they're running their political party BACK to success.
There was so much WRONG with what happened. -
...Libby was convicted of lying to investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice, not for outing Plame. The douche who actually outed Plame to journalists was Richard Armitage, who was at the State Department.
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....is treason, a capital crime. Nobody was hanged. This is one of those movies that's gonna piss me off.
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that's pretty smart....
You Liberal idiots will lap this shit up, never knowing you're being played by the "gods" you help defend....I believe the term is "useful idiot"... -
You're going to list great Naomi Watts performances and leave out that?
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Hah!
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..governed by the bush admin could a spy working on iranian weapons of mass destruction be outed by her OWN government as political retribution. yea maverick 68, christopher hitchens (see nemov's post), defender of the iraq invasion extraordinaire, doesn't pose for vanity fair, he WRITES for them. your "point" rings a little hollow. and thot, "no one cared then"?? well why on earth did the cia report it as a crime to the DOJ? they were bored and just felt like it? oh those liberal cia spooks, up to no good again, creating that nefarious muslim new world order, naughty naughty. the ironies in this story are staggering. easily well-worth a serious documentary rather than any sensationalized hollowood treatment.
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To bad truman Capote is dead. He coudl play Rove as the mincing, prancing cock eating prick that he really is... just sayin'
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..would make a great rove. or that guy who played santa and also in sideways
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Lookup the Glomar Explorer. That was probably one of the biggest stunts the CIA ever tried and it almost worked because it was publicized to the point that no one would ever think it was a CIA operation - it was the technical aspects that failed. I would think that Valerie Plame would have been in a position to work and travel without gaining attention and that no one would suspect her. Regardless of the politics involved, she got screwed over.
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he can play a dick like he did in MI 3. Rove is a true bastard and serves the Wall street crowd well. the more light shone on that human cockroach the better.
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Because this story is just as real. Yeah, this is sarcasm.
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It literally takes five minutes of research to relize that Plame was never outed illegally. The leak is Richard Armitage and he didn't know she was covert. End of story.
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why was it referred to the doj and investigated then (by a republican-appointed prosecutor)? why was cheney's secretary charged with obstruction of justice thus denying the investigation the chance to pursue the real criminals? like you are in any position to identify these events as fire-free where there's PLENTY of fuckings smoke. imagine - just close your eyes and imagine - the utter furor that would erupt from beck/limbaugh/hannity et al if it were a democratic administration outing the wife of a policy critic. "five minutes of research" - don't make me laugh! even right-wing stratfor.com called the reublicans scum for this one.
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for useful idiots
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An active CIA agent was outed to intimidate her husband. This act destroyed every contact she ever made and anyone associated with her. Who knew she was CIA? Who said to destroy her career? Who paid? Let's face it, outing a CIA agent is TREASON, no matter how you look at it. Particularly during wartime! That's a capital offense! Think Rove and his crew will ever see their necks in a noose?
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That Liberal film critics can salivate over (gee, why am I not surprised Capone is giving it a thumbs up?). If a movie sucks, your personal politics should not make it a more or less highly recommended movie to your readers. It's unprofessional to the extreme. That's why all these anti-Bush movies tank. Nobody believes the reviewers and Hollywood knows they don't have to work hard to have them accepted.
And Armitage outed Plame, not Rove or Libby. Patrick Fitzgerald (one of my personal heroes for all the corrupt Chicago politicians he's put in jail) got him for lying about the facts, which is the exact same thing he charged Blagojevich with. He convinced the jury that Libby lied, he failed with Blago. But he knew from day #1 that Armitage was the one who outed Plame, and he never prosecuted him. If her outing was a crime, why did a great prosecutor not punish the guy who did it? -
It's good this story is coming out in a film like this. Trailer looks solid. Also how many these "anti-Bush" movies have come out? One? Idiot. First off political movies are never big at the box office because people hate politics. Also no one wants to watch a movie about the Bush years because we all hated those years. America itself was laughed at for almost a decade alone with the pointless wars, letting the country fall into recession... Not exactly our best time period. Bush was hands down the worst President ever. You have no defense against this. This story shows there were so seriously nasty people working under him. Just do one second of research and you will second guess your allegiance to conservatives who instead of doing something good they just fling shit at everyone and then hold their hands up saying they didn't do anything.
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Really? What exactly makes a movie reviewer liberal? I hate this type of lingo. How when reviewing a fucking movie do you have a liberal or conservative view on things? Seriously I hate when people say stuff like that. So where do you get your movie reviews from? A Church? How do you get a conservative movie review? What does a conservative movie review look like? "This movie showed way too much skin and said fuck five times, so I give it a two out of ten". Bull shit. A movie reviewer is a movie reviewer stop trying to make things so black and white.
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...why was libby obstructing justice in the first place?? and why was he convicted of it? ask yourself. fitzgerald couldn't establish the facts beyond this point so he couldn't go after those higher up the chain.
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the problem with this country is that the super rich never really believed in democracy. sure, they needed to offer it so they could win independence from the british empire, but from day one they only tolerated democracy. and of course they have the religious conservatives in their corner because that's what they have always had to keep the people from picking up torches and pitchforks.
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If not, immediate pass.FRANK DREBIN: Move along, people. Nothing to see here. No one gives a crap about this movie. Move along.
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Otherwise, we'd have nobody to live in their own little fucked up world who does nothing but anti-Bush, anti-capitalism, anti-Christian, etc. movies.
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Just one of the thousand outrageous behind-the-scenes dramas from the Bush era. There is just endless tragedy to be mined from that administration (and hopefully, learned from. Hopefully.)
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It would be great if you actually knew something about the case before fawning over this inaccurate representation of actual events. Its funny to even bring Libby into the case, since he's not who leaked Plames "secret identity", and shows a complete misunderstanding of Wilson's role in the yellow cake uranium case, I fact most besides Wilson understand. A shot didnt come from the Grassy Knoll, and Wilson was outed by Richard Armitage not Scooter Libby those are facts
-Tig -
This was debunked so long ago. Even newspapers that were caught up on the story at the time have come out now and it said Plaime and Wilson were full of crap. Which is why it fell off the radar, living on only on the minds of those He'll bent on believing Bush is Satan and Obama is the second coming of Christ.
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This whole thing was debunked long ago. The news papers were all over it when it first broke, untill they started to clue in that Plame was a drama queen full of shit. Even now you don't hear about it anymore because pretty much everything Plame and Wilson said was shown to be false. But never let facts get in the way of an opportunity to scream conspiracy.
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