Considering how high-strung and abrasive Sean Penn seems in real life, whether he’s stating his political views or attacking the paparazzi, it’s kind of remarkable how often he is able to give effectively restrained performances — sometimes even performances as people the audience might actually want to know. Penn’s performance as former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson in Doug Liman’s Fair Game is not one of those performances. Wilson is a public figure in his own right: he wrote an op-ed piece in 2003 for the New York Times that revealed the George W. Bush administration had twisted speculative evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to begin a war. Whether he’s delivering an impassioned speech about the follies of the Iraq War to a crowd of college students, or screaming and pointing his finger at a group of reporters surrounding his car, Sean Penn never seems to be anyone but Sean Penn.
But the movie isn’t really about Joe Wilson, or Sean Penn. It’s about Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), Wilson’s wife and a CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction. Doug Liman, who at times is capable of directing with great skill (The Bourne Identity, Mr. And Mrs. Smith), is at his most comfortable in the first half of the movie, where we witness the inner procedures of a CIA task force. We oversee board meetings in which aides from the vice president’s office push speculative evidence. We witness the manner in which this unreliable evidence is twisted to justify the coming war. We see the dismay of the intelligent but timid CIA analysts as their work is used for unjust ends. It’s rare that a film paints such an unsensationalized portrait of an organization as mythologized as the CIA, and although I’m sure creative liberties were taken, it is certainly a unique presentation.
But after Wilson reveals the misinterpreted information to the press, the operations of the CIA become secondary to the marital relationship between Plame and Wilson. Valerie Plame’s name is leaked to the press by Richard Armitage, under the direction of vice presidential aide Scooter Libby (David Andrews). Her family is harassed, their names dragged through the mud in the press, and Plame’s operations in Iraq were immediately cancelled; Joe Wilson continued to talk to the press even as he was subject to slander. The rest of the story, as it appeared in public, is known. Eventually, Scooter Libby was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements, but was pardoned by President Bush before serving time.
Perhaps the wide public knowledge of this case is why, at around this point, the movie decides to become a domestic drama concerning the crumbling relationship between the vocal Wilson and the silent Plame, who fears the effect that the publicity of this scandal will have on the normalcy of their family life. It is here that the movie stops delivering; Liman is less skilled with drama than with action, and the abrupt shift in tone and subject matter is unwelcome. Instead of an engaging (albeit politically simplified) thriller, we get a marriage that comes close to falling apart, but Watts’ performance doesn’t provide Plame with suitable degree of emotional strength, and the similarities between Wilson and Penn makes one wonder if Penn is using this role as a catharsis for his own tumultuous marriage with Robin Wright. While I applaud Penn’s willingness to engage in films that represent his political views, he should know not to put this much of himself into a character.
