I'm sort of torn about how to approach Doug Liman's Fair Game, a political thriller based on the real-life events surrounding the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame in the time period in and around the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. It's undeniably a well-constructed slow burning thriller and a great deal of the information in the film appears to be mostly accurate, based on several independent journalistic reports. But then it tries to represent itself as a bold and daring exercise in filmmaking that exposes the truth, while at the same time being a completely conventional film.
While I certainly preferred Liman as a director of smaller films like Swingers and Go, his action films, including the first in the Bourne series, although with the exception of Jumper (from what I've read and the bits I've seen it's an unmitigated disaster), demonstrate a slick vision and controlled hand at presenting fast-paced action sequences with sharp visual and staccato, but cohesive editing. Fair Game mercifully doesn't ever find the need to toss in gratuitous chase sequences or to distort what is essentially a mild-mannered, though complex, story into a trove of action movie cliches and trumped up tension.
