Thursday, March 31, 2011

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.

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