Doug Liman (Swingers, Go, and… Jumper) had a whole lot of options on how to approach making the film adaptation of the Valerie Plame & Joe Wilson story. His decision to focus on the intensely personal side of the relationship between the husband and wife seems to have been a good one – if for no other reason than to showcase the superb acting talents of Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. That being said, the story is serious international thriller territory and the high tension suspense scenes are great. But if that was all the film had to go on, it would be pretty unfulfilling – mostly because of the incredibly frustrating trajectory of the story.

Everyone knows that Plame and Wilson got fucked by the Bush White House (specifically Cheney via Libby via Novak) but it is genuinely interesting to see how their story played out behind the news reports. There is a-whole-nother movie just in what happens when a field operative like Plame gets yanked from her cases. The Butterworth brothers’ screenplay is based on Plame’s autobiography of the same name and Liman also worked very closely with both Plame and Wilson to make sure the details were correct. Not only that – Liman actually traveled to Baghdad to shoot some of the scenes. Liman is a camera on his shoulder kind of director (he’s his own DP) and the end result is both a visceral and personal telling of a very interesting story.