Watts, Penn are "Fair Game"

Oscar Prospects: Best Picture, Best Actress (Watts), Best Supporting Actor (Penn), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing

Director Doug Liman's "Fair Game" has been conspicuously absent from any kind of conversation since being the only American release represented in this year's Cannes Film Festival. Maybe that's because star Sean Penn and Liman got into such heated collisions on set that Penn refuses to promote the film publicly; maybe it's because it's a wildly political retelling of an infamous part of the Bush administration.

In telling the story of Valerie Plame's outing as a covert CIA operative after her husband, ambassador Joe Wilson, openly questioned the manipulation of intelligence directly leading to the Iraq War, "Fair Game" is unabashedly straightforward in its narrative and its political slant -- it's one of the things most admirable about the film and one of the reasons it's probably going to draw fire if it goes big on the awards circuit.



Naomi Watts has already started campaigning for her calculated, bold performance, but in a surprisingly crowded Best Actress field it seems unlikely she'll get the recognition she most certainly deserves for this very understated turn.

Rather, it's Sean Penn who has the showier, louder role as Wilson. The film gives him plenty of moments to vocalize his anger and his frustration, and Penn rises to the challenge. Wilson is a fearless, admirable figure (in this film's version of the events) with a taste for rabid political analysis.

"Fair Game" is an elegant political thriller that focuses on the power of complex, high-level organizations rather than any kind of violence or "super baddy" conspiracy. It's very akin to "All the President's Men" in its dissection of executive power.

Still, it's hard to say whether or not "Fair Game" will have any playing power on either the Globes or Oscars. It can have a groundswell of support for Penn, Watts or its screenplay -- adapted by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth from books by both Plame and Wilson -- but this one has a long way to go, and it needs to convince people to either embrace its political message or see the movie as a universal story of corruption and abuse of power (i.e. not just a Bush-era parable).