I Were a Weapon

While in New York, we did something we rarely do at home: see a movie.

Fair Game is out, but I'm not sure it has opened nationwide yet. For those who are unfamiliar with the movie, it is based on two books, one by Joe Wilson, the other by his wife, Valerie Plame.

I'll be honest, I didn't know the movie was coming out until I heard them both interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation a few weeks back. It was such a great interview, I was hoping to see the movie and that Denton might be interested in it as well.

Though I think he would have seen it anyway, we had been walking around the city for five hours, he would have seen The Train that Couldn't Slow Down just to get off his feet.

If you follow politics and this story at all, you know some of it and you know the outcome, but you probably don't know quite a bit of the internal pieces. Admittedly, I did not read either of their books, so they probably tackle some of the personal fall-out, while we were privy to some of the professional side.

Maybe it is just me, but having to sit through Shrub and his lies, so close to his administration, and so close to all the press for his fiction..........umm...I mean autobiography, was just painful and very frustrating when you know how it ends with no one getting what they deserve for it - be it the breach of trust with Plame and Wilson, or with the country about going to war.

Ruckiry (not Jon's boss), the director sticks more to the Plame-Wilsons than they do some of the logistics of it all. Some of the investigation on WMD is there, for sure - and how much of a covert agent she was is revealed. I'm sure it was in the book as well.

The guy who plays Scooter Libby looks eerily like W anyway - so that was disconcerting. But they didn't get into too much of Robert Novak and nothing of Judith Miller.

The camera work is jerky - too much so. I get they are trying to do a movie that is personal, political, and a thriller, but that and their g-ddamn kids doing nothing but interrupting all the time was a little annoying.

The acting is good, and Sean Penn has his moments, but I don't see any awards for him. I don't see Naomi Watts in much, but she can eerily look like Nicole Kidman at times. She does a better job than Penn, but there are some ok supporting players.

The theatre was smallish and it was packed. We even had to sit three rows from the screen, if we wanted to sit together.....which we did.

It was all ok, but it might be better to read the books (I might) or at least listen to the Talk of the Nation interview I hyperlinked at the beginning of this post.

Hey, it got us to a movie. There's something to be said for that.


Song by: Suzanne Vega