Magouilles à la maison blanche
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Getting The Truth Out...At A Great Personal Cost
10/10
Author: virek213 from San Gabriel, Ca., USA
22 April 2011
Much of the rationale given by the Bush Administration for America going to war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein at the end of the winter of 2003 centered around claims made by British intelligence officials that Hussein's regime sought out mass quantities of yellow cake uranium from the country of Niger in western Africa. Those claims had been put into the State of the Union speech that Bush had given in January of that year. As it turned out, though, those claims, when thoroughly investigated, turned out to be untrue.
Subsequently, a high-level couple, ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, were outed by cronies inside the Bush White House and placed in the middle of a firestorm in which anyone attempting to discredit the Bush Administration in any small way was censured in the press. It is their fight that was depicted in the 2010 film FAIR GAME.
Watts and Penn portray the real-life couple at the center of this firestorm. Penn, as ambassador Wilson, investigates the claims about yellow cake uranium and aluminum tubing supposedly being used to make nuclear weapons being exported between Niger and Iraq back in the late 1990s, as it appears that America is on the brink of ousting Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Meanwhile, Watts, as Valerie Plame, makes it her business to get reliable sources of Iraq's intelligence out of there to give the CIA the proper information.
Penn asserts that such a trade of uranium not only could not have occurred, but that the aluminum tubing in question is not of the kind that would be suitable for doing what the Bush Administration says Hussein intends it for—to create a nuclear bomb. Thus, the rationale for going to war in Iraq has just been rendered fraudulent, but a little too late for those Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers caught in the middle. Even so, however, Watts' name and status are both exposed in the media from within the bowels of the administration, rendering her damaged goods, and infuriating Penn.
The other significant thing the whole imbroglio causes is a huge schism between the couple, since Watts is initially unwilling to fight back while Penn makes the rounds on the networks to tell the truth of the matter. The allegations against both of them mount in the press, which keeps hounding them for their alleged lack of patriotism; and finally, both of them come out of the shadows to tell their side of the story.
Incisively directed by Liman, who was responsible for the 2002 Robert Ludlum adaptation THE BOURNE IDENTITY, FAIR GAME is a powerful expose of the Iraq war as seen through the eyes and experiences of its most noted diplomatic figures, every bit as powerful a political film as any, documentary or otherwise, made since 9/11, and, indeed, every bit as thorough as films like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THIRTEEN DAYS.
While there are political considerations to be considered in this film, especially give that Penn was one of the most ferocious and outspoken critics anywhere of the Bush Administration from the beginning, this is equally a hard-hitting character study as well; and Penn and Watts do an excellent job of portraying the beleaguered Wilsons, while a whole host of good character actors are superb in their roles of the dark underlings that work for Team Bush.
Liman, who also does the cinematography, shoots FAIR GAME in a very documentary-like style, and in the same bleached-color visuals that were a trademark of Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, MINORITY REPORT, and MUNICH. Both Valerie Plane and Joe Wilson risked everything they had to get the truth out there about the Bush Administration's dissembling with regards to a non-existent connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11; and FAIR GAME is an excellent film depicting that struggle, clearly one of the best films of 2010.
