Julianne Moore Plays Sarah Palin: HBO 'Game Change' Film Will Be as Intense as Election 2008

A few days ago, HBO released a trailer for an upcoming political blockbuster Game Change, starring Ed Harris as Senator John McCain and Julianne Moore as Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. The movie is based on the best-selling book by John Heilemann and Mark Helperin on the 2008 presidential elections, which shares its title with the movie. For a political junkie and novice alike, this should be an entertaining and thrilling depiction of what the book describes as “the race of a lifetime.”

If the movie is anything like the book, it will expose just how desperate the Republican team was to counter the excitement of then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s nomination. The movie should chronicle the haste of the McCain team’s (less than thorough) vetting of Palin and the speed in which they pulled Palin out from obscurity and into the limelight. The movie will also probably cover the very high summits and the very low tribulations that characterized Palin’s tenure as a vice presidential candidate.

Ed Harris is a veteran actor who routinely delivers a great performance and from what I have seen from the trailer, Julianne Moore has the former Alaska governor spot-on. What interests me about the movie, however, is why the producers chose the scope they did. The movie will primarily focus on the Republican ticket 2008 post-convention. Whereas the book covered, at great length, the very heated primary battle between then- Senators Obama and Clinton as well as the equally interesting but less competitive GOP primary.

As for the movie’s effect on the greater political scene, I would doubt that this film will have too much of a political impact of fallout. As Oliver Stone’s W and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 demonstrated (both released prior to presidential elections), movies, either critical or supportive, don’t really persuade an audience to change their viewpoints, just reaffirm their beliefs they had prior to the movie. At any rate, I am very excited for the release of this movie and I think people from both sides of the aisle will find something to enjoy about it.

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