REVIEW: Watts and Penn Shine in Provocative If Uneven Fair Game

That answer, as followers of the story and The New York Times op-ed section know well, was contradicted loudly by Joe Wilson in the summer of 2003, four months into the war. The previous year Wilson was sent, on the recommendation of his wife, to look into a rumor that Niger (where he was the U.S. ambassador under Bush I) was selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Liman condenses the trip into a hazy, busy montage sequence, and though the style is a little convoluted, the outcome is clear: No nukes. Plame's parallel operation to gather intel by using Iraqi-Americans with ties to Iraqi physicists as information mules also rolls up a big fat donut. "You have to know why you're lying," she advises one skeptical recruit, solemn and breathless as a Broadway diva on opening night, "and never forget the truth."

When Plame's identity is casually unveiled in a column written by Robert Novak (whose involvement, along with the scandal's Girl Friday, Judith Miller, doesn't figure into the film) several days after Wilson's public reiteration of his findings in Niger, the spy's career is over, and her marriage hits the ropes as well. Having not considered the consequences -- or advised his wife about his plans -- Wilson dove headlong into wrestling the story into submission, one man against the Republican smear machine.

When the story broke it was telegraphed to most -- including Plame herself -- through television pundits, sound bites and spin jockeys; a cacophonous, seemingly uncontrollable narrative took shape. Liman arranges a host of television clips from the time within his frame, giving each one a chattering line or two, conscious of the visual and narrative authority -- vested by virtue of its size alone -- that his chosen medium has over that of the bad guys. Bush, Cheney and Condi pop up on various monitors, along with other talking heads, but they look so small on those little glowing screens, like tricksters hovering in thin air.

Plame herself seems to fade from view in the aftermath of the leak, despite the fact that Liman narrows his focus, as the world did, on to the couple of the hour. Watts is excellent as a woman committed to her country but perhaps even more so to the demands of her job. She's inscrutable by professional design and avoidant by nature, and her layers prove resistant to the turn the film takes into marital crisis and reconciliation. Some private happiness is salvaged, and feel-good footage of the real-life Plame's testimony before congress accompanies the credits, and yet it's the darndest thing: With a film as politically provocative and open to narrative risk as Fair Game is, an upbeat ending feels a little like getting the slip.

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