WE SHOULD ALL BE PISSED

Doug Liman's Fair Game bothered me.  It angered me.  George Bush and all of his cronies really got away with some sinister, un-American shit.  They should all be ashamed of themselves and they all should have been thoroughly whipped and beaten.  Now that that's out of the way...from a movie stand-point, Fair Game is very compelling stuff.  Liman's film focuses on Valerie Plame (perfectly played by Naomi Watts), the much-reported-about covert CIA operative who was outed by corrupt White House officials after her crusading husband, Joe Wilson (the customarily intense Sean Penn), wrote a New York Times article stating that the Bush administration had faked intelligence about WMD's in order to invade and destroy Iraq.  It's a classic "David VS Goliath" tale, and it's down-right fucked-up how our country treated someone like Plame.  Liman directs in an unfussy, doc-like manner (a stark comparison to the gritty yet slick stylings of The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith) and benefits from a lean and fact-packed script from Jez and John-Henry Butterworth.  It makes for a nice companion piece with Green Zone even if there isn't anything in the way of action or shootouts or explosions.  It really struck me as a project that would have been a natural fit for HBO; I think it would have cleaned up at the Emmy's.  It's a really good, if very frustrating, political thriller.