Sexy Female Lead
1995: Cindy Crawford is Kate McQuean, a sexy divorce lawyer and fitness buff who is mysteriously targeted by assassins. Wears a lot of skimpy tops, especially when jogging or fleeing.
2010: Naomi Watts is Valerie Plame, a wife and mother of two who is mysteriously outed to the world as a government operative. Must remain covered up, especially in Muslim countries.

Sexy Male Lead
1995: William Baldwin is Max Kirkpatrick, a clean-shaven young detective with slicked-back hair and a reputation for not playing by the rules.
2010: Sean Penn is Joseph C. Wilson, a paunchy former ambassador with slicked-back hair and an intense dislike of people who don't play by the rules.

Based on a Book
2010: Released in 2007, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House was Plame's story of how her secret identity was compromised by someone in the White House in 2003.
1995: Paula Gosling's Fair Game had already been loosely adapted into the 1986 Sylvester Stallone movie Cobra, but it was decided that that movie, while terrible, wasn't quite terrible enough.

Big-Name Director
2010: Doug Liman is best known for directing The Bourne Identity, although he also did Swingers, Go and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Needless to say, we expect good things from him here.
1995: Andrew Sipes wrote a few TV episodes of Simon & Simon and The Equalizer before directing Fair Game. Needless to say, he never worked again.

Hot Spy Action
1995: The people trying to kill Kate are former KGB agents turned hired terrorists, and they use classic spy gear like thermal imaging and tracking devices to spy on their target, in addition to planting a bomb in her TV.
2010: A spy herself, Plame travels to other countries in the guise of a businesswoman and encourages sources to turn over information on nuclear material. It's real spying, and it's... not very exciting.

Hot Boxcar Sex
1995: In the heat of a chase, the two fugitives finally succumb to the palpable sexual tension and do it in a freight car, because they have a 15-minute break from being shot at.
2010: Valerie is out of town so often and so tired from long hours at the CIA that she doesn't really have a lot of time for sex with her husband, let alone going all the way down to the train yard to do it.

Villainous Mastermind
1995: A menacingly named Russian Colonel known as "Ilya Pavel Kazak."
2010: An improbably named bureaucrat known as "Scooter Libby."

Get the scoop on the true story behind Fair Game.

Check out our gallery of the best and worst movie spy couples!

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