Nothing But The Truth

The film "Nothing But The Truth" purports to dramatize the outing of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA agent whose name was leaked during the Bush administration in retaliation for her husband's finding that there was no substance to reports that Saddam Hussein was obtaining fissile material from Nigeria to make nuclear weapons. The film takes great liberties with the underlying facts of the Valerie Plame case. It has to do so in part because no one who knows what really happened is talking, so "the truth" eludes us. In the film a whacko right-wing zealot shoots and kills the betrayed CIA agent solely for melodrama, leading viewers to lament her widowed husband and now-motherless daughter. It's too bad they took such liberties, which highlight the film's essential weakness: trying to tell a story where there's something important going on, but not much to say.