Fair Game

Rating: ***

One of the great assets to Doug Liman’s Fair Game is how ably and subtly he’s able to rewind the clock back to 2003. Here and now, the idea of going to Iraq to displace a dictator that had absolutely zero to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2011is ludicrous. A tragic act of executive hubris where bad decision making followed bad intelligence. Support for the Iraq War, and trying to find someone who will admit that they did, is a little like trying to now find fans of O-Town, 98 Degrees, and the other inter-changeable boy bands that were on the radio at the time.

There’s a scene in the second half of Fair Game where Ambassador Joe Wilson (played by Sean Penn) is meeting some businessmen. He excuses himself to use the washroom and when he returns to the table, an irate woman is explaining to his clients about how Wilson, having called into question the Bush Administration’s justification for war in a New York Times op-ed, is a traitor, and other awful things. At this point, Wilson is close to his wit’s end; he’s been labelled a pariah, his wife Valerie Plame has been outed as a CIA agent in seemingly retaliation, and his business meeting has been ruined by someone who bought the party line. There’s such electricity to that scene, the emotion runs over, and you can feel Wilson’s frustration to the core. It’s such an energizing scene and the pity is that you wish that energy could have translated through the rest of the movie.

Based on books by both Wilson and Plame, Liman’s film is a rather under-stated and fair-minded re-enactment of the scandal that, at the time, only slightly derailed the George W. Bush White House, but nonetheless laid the ground work for its eventual downfall on all matters concerning Iraq. In terms of story, the film is almost distant and unemotional. It’s tactful in saying, or rather not saying, where in lays the fault of ruining a good woman’s career and discrediting her and her husband. At heart though, and there is a heart, it’s about how two distinguished people deal with fact they’re nearly ruined for the sake of political inconvenience.

Penn as Wilson and Naomi Watts as Plame are both really well cast and are more than up to the challenges. Penn particularly amazed me for managing to downplay his innate Sean Penn-ness, toning down the persona and playing Wilson very straight without any added demagoguery or big speech moments. There’s just the frustration of a man whose own word and integrity is called into question, and the fact that doesn’t sit well with him. Watts as Plame is the model of civility. Her reaction to being outed as a CIA officer is to cover herself. The mere admission of her status means the worst possible damage of all has already been done. She’s a career woman that loses her career, or rather has it taken away. It’s stolen, but with all her skill, there’s nothing she can do to get it back. What use is a covert operative whose face everybody knows?

Technically, the film is well made, although there were a few scenes that felt that Liman was trying too hard to duplicate his style from The Bourne Identity. Of course real life spy games are not the same as cinematic ones, and to me this was one of the more interesting aspects of Fair Game, seeing the real, almost mundane, facets of intelligence gathering. Liman paints well the difficulty in getting absolute facts in the murky world we live in, and how that difficulty was compounded by a government with an agenda and a minimum standard to meet for war.

On that account, the film tells the story in a very straightforward manner, and I would say emotionlessly as well. I imagine the point was to be as unbiased as possible, but the fact is that this is a personal story, told from the perspective of the people involved most intimately in it, and the point is that there should be more fire to the story and the way it’s told. The performances by Penn and Watts nearly sell it, but I think that the film starts too soon, and ends too early in the timeline of events. It felt like the story wasn’t over, and while there was some kind of resolution it was neither emotional nor political.

 

The strong performances do win out slightly though, but the dynamics of the debate and the lack of a forceful voice is kind of concerning. This isn’t an occasion where we have to skate on thin ice around the subject, for it is know pretty well known that a lot of people in the White House did a lot of bad stuff to fight a war on specious evidence. There was no call for such a soft touch, and one can be fair to both sides without treating them both with kid gloves. On second thought, maybe Fair Game lives up to its name in an unexpected way.

Red

Rating: ***1/5

The great gift of Red is that it’s fun. Although it’s got more Oscar-winners per capita than most action movies or comic book adaptations of its kind, it doesn’t really break any new ground or put a high premium on dramatic performance. So why see it? Well let’s start with John Malkovich concealing a weapon in a big pink pig plush toy and Dame Helen Mirren firing a big, damn machine gun in an evening gown, and go from there.

Red, based on the graphic novel written by Warren Ellis (creator of Global Frequency and The Authority), is actually an acronym for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous.” It’s a classification that’s given to Bruce Willis’ Frank Moses, a retired CIA assassin living a not-so fulfilling golden years in placid suburbia. The thing he gets most excited about is his pension cheque, which he promptly tears up so that he has a reason to call Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) at the administrator’s office.

Frank’s quiet retirement though comes to a thundering end when a high-tech hit squad tries to, ahem, liquefy his assets. A trained agent, Frank knows that anyone he’s had contact with is in danger, and that’s a pretty short list that starts and ends with Sarah. Along the way Frank recruits his former CIA pals Marvin (Malkovich), Joe (Morgan Freeman) and Victoria (Mirren) to help him sort out the whos, whats and whys that an Agency goon (Karl Urban) is trying to erase him with extreme severity.

Part Bourne game of cat and mouse, part Grumpy Old Men, and part J.J. Abrams spy-fi shenanigans, Red easily entertains. It’s a brainless summer blockbuster with Oscar-calibre talent; like a Coen Brothers movie as interpreted by Michael Bay. Needless to say then that this movie does not follow the almost barebones plotting and straightforward narrative of Ellis’ original three-issue comic book, but this Red manages to expand on the book’s simple story in a satisfying, though nearly convoluted way.

Yes, the story is jam-packed to the point where you’re not sure where the emphasis of the story is supposed to be: the notion of talented assassins dealing with retirement or a massive government conspiracy involving the vice-president, illegal arms sales and some kind of black ops in South America years earlier that initially put Frank on the endangered spies list. All considerations of nuance though are laid aside once the guns start blazing, and when they do, as a viewer, you’re more than happy to let the violence engage you.

But if that’s not your speed, there’s always the quality acting on display. You do get a feeling of genuine camaraderie from the cast, a group of analogue soldiers kicking butt better than the agents of the digital age. Poor Karl Urban is left out in the cold playing the straightman, but he plays his part well enough to let this Masterpiece Theatre version of The Expendables take centre stage. For this reason, Red can elevate itself above the usual action movie tedium to be something a little for engaging than just the guns and ammo.

Aside from the main cast, which would be pretty tremendous by itself, we get some quality supporting performances as well. Brian Cox plays a former Russian spy who tries hard, though unsuccessfully, to hide his pleasure at finding himself the needed ally of his former adversaries. Meanwhile, Richard Dreyfuss channels some remnant of Dick Cheney after having played the Great Sat – I mean, former U.S. Vice-President in Oliver Stone’s W, by here portraying the weapons manufacturer at the heart of the conspiracy.

Still, it’s Malkovich that steals the show playing the burnt out, Section Eight Marvin. Speaking of the Coens, I was reminded strongly of Burn After Reading when seeing Red because it’s almost like the madness of Osborne Cox took off to a whole new level of paranoia in the face of an ever expanding “League of Morons.” Without Malkovich, I don’t think this movie would have gone down the same. John, all’s forgiven for Jonah Hex.

But despite the balance that Red strikes between laughs and action, the film may be too much of one and not enough of the other according to some viewers. But the right frame of mind makes the difference, I think. Much like The A-Team movie from earlier this year, Red honestly mixes comedy and gun play with a healthy and lively cast of characters. It’s a satisfying summer film in the chill of fall though, and is, at the very least, a good time at the theatre.