Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Chronologically, at the begging and end of this thread, you'll see the same 1 star post in 2010 and 2018 ...bashing Sean Penn and calling this movie 'political lies and half truths'...and actually blaming Clinton, using what he doesn't realize are lies, to do it. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's stuff like that, that gave us our problems today and why movies like this should be seen by everybody. I know a review that talks about another review is not what this is supposed to be about, but anything like that post which is full of the exact things he complains about, and may keep someone from watching an excellent movie that shows is just how corrupt an administration can be and the damage and deaths it causes, is a big deal to me. The movie shows exactly why this country lost the respect of the entire developed world because of our invasion of Iraq. Millions of people, our allies, protested it in the streets all over the world.If you followed this story closely at the time like I did, you'd know that this movie is exactly the truth .. and Penn, considered one of best actors today, couldn't have been better in it.If this was all lies, why did Scooter Libby go to prison, indicted on five felony counts for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice?Even more ridiculous, the commentor says this is just propaganda to make Bush look like a war monger.....ignoring everything that came out later and all the proof that came out that showed us that the entire Iraq war was based on lies...from the Bush administration and the real fake news was on the you know what news station.

This movie is what Oliver Stone's "W." should have been. That is to say that it holds the Bush administration accountable. And it should be.The fact is that our invasion of Iraq was held under false pretenses and the fact is that the Bush Administration attacked any Americans that disagreed with it. There was even a bill that never passed the House, was never voted on, that would have made anyone that disagreed with the Bush Administration a domestic terrorist.Those are just facts. If you disagree with it for some sake of partisan loyalty, just look at the Dixie Chicks. All they said was that they wished Bush wasn't from Texas and look how badly they went after them.Look at the amount of openly anti-war Democrats in congress that found their way onto the no fly list.It's just a shame more people don't go to see movies like this. It should make you angry.The facts don't have to be 100%, this is a Hollywood movie, not a documentary, but it's not one that doesn't have a valid meaning behind it.So valid that it makes a great companion piece for "Good Night and Good Luck." It's that whole doomed to repeat it thing.The fact is, we live in extreme times. We live in times when people are extreme and they attack anyone that disagrees with them. It is still happening.We are still getting called "unPatriotic" and "unAmerican," for simply not agreeing with the far right. Just like we were when that junior senator from Wisconsin of all places was doing his level best to assure that anyone that wasn't militantly on the right was black listed.The same happened under Bush and "Fair Game" is a wonderful illustration of the levels extremists will go to, to undermine anyone that doesn't lockstep with their beliefs.Welcome to the new America, same as the old America.

This movie is in league with a slew of other politically driven plot lines which open with a lot of promise but fall flat on their faces thereafter as midway approaches. The way they show sean penn's assessment in iraq and build the story promises to be very interesting but ends up being being only that-just a build up. The director could have focused on the real plot and the political aspect more rather than the mundane honky-tonk of a troubled relationship and media-havoc wreck on an otherwise happy and functioning family. This was similar to kill the messenger where the intense storyline is dumped in pursuit of some sold-out monotonous repetitive and over explored melodramas of family unison with all the emotional jargon. So what if the central government proclaims information completely opposite to one article written by a comparative nobody (compared to them)in the daily papers. There's lot of intelligence on important matters being leaked, misinterpreted and falsely reported over through different channels of media for which there is no accountability. It seems ludicrous and over the top to me how the media's backlash creates unsettlement in the family-when you are in positions that they both are this kind of stress comes with the job- its nothing to loose sleep and break-up over. Boring and presumptous facets of the story are tweaked in lieu of the bigger picture.

This microcosm of the routine abuse of power that took place under the Bush presidency is a story that deserves to be told over and over again but it deserves a much better vehicle. Watts and Penn do their best but are let down by formulaic script and direction. Supporting players are drawn from the usual pool and the result is an overpriced TV movie that itself forms part of the ongoing conspiracy theory. As an outsider (I'm British living by choice in Los Angeles), I can't help comparing America's treatment of Bush Jr. with that of Nixon and concluding that America prefers stupid Presidents, irrespective of the consequences of their actions.