Fair Game

Bea says: I wanted to see this after seeing it previewed in October, as it is set in DC where we are now living. What I didn't know was that it was a true story.

Set in 2001, during the run-up into the Iraq War, the film follows the story of Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson. Valerie is a long-serving and successful CIA agent, and Joe an ex-diplomat with much experience of Africa. Despite an apparently ordinary life as the parents of twins in Georgetown, they both become involved in CIA investigations into the shipment of yellowcake uranium from Niger into Iraq, via a convulated route (the CIA asks for Joe's help due to his knowledge of Africa; Valerie is leading a number of top secret missions in Iraq to investigate the WMD situation that later received so much press around the world).

The plot is quite intricate and involved and, I think, requires some background knowledge - the Plume/Wilson story was obviously huge here and I guess most US audiences would have this awareness. My take on what happens next is that Plume was sold out by the CIA in order to bury the real news; that there were no WMDs in Iraq, as we now all know.

A press leak meant that Wilson's activity with the CIA, and his relationship to Plume and her identity were plastered all over the news media. This resulted in dismissal from the CIA as she could no longer be covert, and a lot of mud-slinging against her and Wilson.

I was most interested in the film's handling of the strain this placed on Plume's sense of self, of who she really was, and on her marriage. These aspects were well dealt with.

The film is taken from books written by both Plume and Wilson, and they were involved with the adaptation, so clearly it is their version of the story; I would certainly like to read both.

A thought-provoking thriller which also made me realised how much time has passed since 2001.
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Cecil says: Although the CIA comes out of this film with less than flying colours, the portrayal of the internal discussions and dilemmas, not to mention disagreements among officials shows the Agency in a fairly nuanced light - quite different from the image I had of it in the UK through the 50s to the 80s from its nefarious deeds in countries like Guatemala, Chile etc.

It's also interesting to realise how we see world events through fairly parochial eyes. As Bea says, we'd never heard of this Plume character; probably because all the UK attention during and after the Iraq war was focused on Tony Blair (and to a lesser extent George Bush).

This film had a definite anti-war, critical message on the wheeler-dealing going on as war approached back in 2003. But it did so in a more muted way than someone like Ken Loach would have done; or than that recent film by Armando Ioanucci, which I really didn't like. It had genuine drama, it portrayed the characters well, and it raised lots of issues around work, ethics, family and breakdown.

I felt a certain identification with the Joe Wilson character who, in the 2nd scene of the film, cannot resist getting into an angry row with a dinner guest in the middle of a birthday party (something I confess I have done at least 3 times in the last couple of years). Sean Penn played his obstinate determination well.

I also identified with the Plame character. Thankfully I have never had the power of the White House (or Number 10) pushing against me and undermining my character, but I have experienced that moment of breaking point when the forces of politics, the media and power games somehow try to involve you in their own games. So I had vivid memories as she breaks down in front of the mirror at her parents' home.

This is good drama; psychological and political. Well worth a watch, whatever your views on Iraq.

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