Fair Game

Fair Game recounts the real story of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer working on weapons proliferation whose life as a wife and mother conceals her career at the agency. When her husband, the former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is sent to investigate reports that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, he finds no evidence supporting the claim. After the Bush administration uses the allegation to help justify the invasion of Iraq, Wilson publishes an article questioning the intelligence behind it. In response, Plame's classified identity is leaked to the press, ending her covert work, exposing her contacts abroad and straining her marriage as she fights to defend her reputation.

Doug Liman directed the film, the sixth of the fourteen features he has directed in chronological order, following Jumper and preceding Edge of Tomorrow. Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth wrote the screenplay, and Jerry Zucker, Akiva Goldsman and Liman produced. Naomi Watts plays Plame and Sean Penn plays Wilson, with Sam Shepard, Noah Emmerich, Michael Kelly and Bruce McGill among a credited cast of seventy-four. Made for about 22 million dollars, it returned roughly 24 million worldwide.

Audience responses are moderate: on IMDb it holds 6.8/10 from more than 52,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.5/10 from around 880 votes. A critics' rating of 6.9/10 from 174 reviews places reviewers slightly above the audience average.