Our last movie this week is a docudrama from Bourne Identity director Doug Liman that chronicles the Valerie Plame scandal of the mid-00's. Remember that one? Plame was a CIA agent whose name was leaked to the press by the Bush White House as revenge for her husband Joe Wilson's publication of the non-evidence he found of weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War. This scandal seemed to go on forever, and the movie combines both Valerie Plame's and Joe Wilson's books on the affair to tell us what happened from their point of view. Naomi Watts is nearly perfect casting as Valerie (she looks just like her), while Sean Penn takes on Joe, kind of perfect as well as the outspoken, openly anti-war journalist. Watching this movie puts us right back in the early years of Iraq and the Bush administration, and it's actually disheartening to remember how vengeful and toxic the atmosphere was in the country back then, as an administration filled with incompetent liars did everything it could to ruin those who disagreed with them, while pushing the country into one disaster after another in its panicked and idiotic response to the 9/11 attacks. This is a good movie to watch to remind yourself of how things used to be, so that you can be even more grateful for where we are now, and the best thing about it is that it didn't sugarcoat facts or obscure any names in the telling of this story. The culprits are all right there on the screen, as they deserve to be.
Trailer:
