mbtruth3.thumbnail.jpgAn anonymous reviewer attended a preview of the new Warner Brothers movie based on the Valerie Plame/CIA leak case and sends this:

Went to a screening of that new film based loosely on the CIA leak case, "Nothing But the Truth." When I say loose, I’m not kidding.

It’s about Venezuela instead of Iraq. There’s no Karl Rove. Instead of being a dupe, the Judy Milleresque character, played by Kate Beckinsale, is no tool of a corrupt administration. There’s no dastardly Karl Rove, heinous Bob Novak, or earnest Matt Cooper trying to expose the wrongdoing of all of the above.

Shot on a small budget with minimal sets and bad Washington stock footage, it feels a bit like a Lifetime movie as Kate Beckinsale does time for refusing to reveal her source. The judge who incarcerates her for contempt is played by none other than Floyd Abrams who does a pretty good cameo. His son, Dan Abrams, plays himself on some in-the-background Tv footage.

While the movie adds some interesting twists about motherhood–Beckinsale’s Miller, unlike the real one, has children as does the Valerie Wilson character played by Vera Farmiga–it lacks the moral ambiguity and complexity of the real story. Farmiga’s character is named Van Doren in the film, an allusion to the Quiz Show scandal of the 50s, another American story about truth telling and lies?

Farmiga’s fine–at one point she fires off the C word, shockingly– but most characters are utterly one dimensional. In the film, the hypertalented Angela Bassett is the newspaper editor and has a range of A to B in her moral complexity. In real life, Bill Keller, Judy’s editor at the New York Times, was a more interesting character–veering wildly from lionizing his reporter to tossing her overboard when the criticism got to be too much and showing a profound lack of interest in her crappy sourcing.

How the Times dealt with Miller is a drama of manners all by itself. Nothing so interesting takes place here.

That said, some bit parts drive the film. Alan Alda, who is making a nice second career as the heavy, does a good turn as Beckinsale’s lawyer. For her part, Beckinsale seems to be shooting for a Cherlize Theron Oscar. Impossibly beautiful, the British actress appears without makeup and in prison garb for much of the movie. In Hollywood, this counts as bravery.

It’s worth seeing the film if you’re interested in the case but it’s less interesting than reality.