MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Fair Game Rated PG-13

Directed by Doug Liman.  Starring Naomi Watts, Sean Penn.

Photo © 2010 Summit Entertainment
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

A lot has changed in the years since Watergate. 

Back in the early 70s there was some genuine moral outrage about a president’s involvement with a high-level cover-up, leading eventually to the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency and the box-office hit All the President’s Men. 

Fair Game is based on the true story of how a covert CIA operative’s identity was revealed in 2003 a few weeks after her husband wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times. His article shared information about a fact-finding trip to Niger (at the government’s request) in which he was unable to find any sign that the country was involved in producing radioactive materials for Iran. 

The woman was Valerie Plame and her husband was Joseph Wilson, former Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Iraq (and the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein before the war). 

The couple believes that the office of the Vice President betrayed them. This is their story, based on their two memoirs (one written as a movie tie-in!), and they’re sticking to it. 

But, in this millennium, most of the moral outrage is clearly the Wilsons’ to vent.  There seems to be no desire in the American populace to either condemn or exonerate the Bush Administration.  And there’s even less of a desire to applaud the Wilson’s moral fortitude. 

“The world’s a mess, nobody’s perfect, what are you gonna do?” seems to be the mantra of our age.   As Christians, however, we can say: “The world’s a mess, nobody’s perfect, but God’s willing to forgive us as well as push us towards doing the right thing.” 

And that is why Fair Game is well worth your time, if only to remind us that every person has daily opportunities to make moral choices, which are always the hardest ones to make. 

The film is at its best when it shows us the everyday life of the Wilsons at home and how they try to raise their kids and keep friendships alive while not being able to share much at all about what mom does at work (which, in many ways, involved lying for a good cause).

Fair Game is a very entertaining film about a national controversy that most people have already forgotten. 

Get some friends from “that other political party” to see it with you and have a good time debating the very important ethical issues implicit in this political drama.

Pitchfork/Halo Ratings:
Three halos.
A film that deals honestly with living life ethically, which is harder to do these days.

Three pitchforks.
If you take this film at face value, there’s a lot of duplicity afoot in high places; if you don’t, this film will make you mad about its misguided point-of-view, which should be a place for ethical reflection as well; yeah, and there’s some swearing, including a couple of quick F bombs..

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