Fair Game is inspired by the true events in the life of Valerie Plame. Though, how much of the movie is fact or fiction, is open for discussion, it gives the story a lot of juice. With Wiki-Leaks exposing many a cover-ups of the government agencies, the timing of Fair Game has been perfect. It exposes the controversial actions taken by the US government during the US-Iraq war.

I’ve been a big fan of Frederick Forsyth’s novels. He takes an incident or a political scandal and weaves a perfectly believable and entertaining piece of fiction around it. Though his novels have much more action and are quite fast paced as compared to this movie, Fair Game possesses the same blueprints of an entertainer.

Doug Liman has provided us with some very entertaining spy-action films like the Bourne series and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. But though the tag line of Fair Game reads - ‘Wife. Mother. Spy’, it is not an action film. If not more, they’ve given equal footage to her being a wife and mother, as they have given to her being a spy. You wont miss the action much though, as the intense drama keeps you hooked.

Jez Butterworth (screenplay) has done his homework in translating the story of Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) into an engaging script. Doug Liman’s direction manages to keep you engaged, despite the sluggish pace of the story. The slow pace is required to give the lead actors (Naomi Watts and Sean Penn) a touch of reality. Their characters grow, coping up to the drastic changes in their lives, and it is shown efficiently owing to their brilliant performances. These two have carried on where they left off in 21 Grams.

If you’re into politics, especially the US-Iraq war, you’d love this movie. And even if you’re not, you can watch this one as pure fiction and love it for the powerful performances by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Catch on DVD for sure.

This review is by guest reviewer Aniket Thakkar. Aniket Thakkar, is a writer and web developer, and he loves to talk about himself in third person. When he is not busy devising evil-genius plans of world domination, he can be found writing at his website http://flashfiction.in Ever since he took the red pill, he is on an ongoing mission to find out how deep this rabbit hole goes. Aniket Thakkar also blogs at http://flashfiction.in/.