The dissonance hangs unresolved in the air, only deepened by another moral conundrum: After Wiener convinces one of the American hostages seized by Saddam in the run-up to the war to talk, the hostage disappears -- leaving Wiener anguished about his fate and filled with guilt. (A far darker episode is recounted in the book. The Iraqis offered Wiener's team the chance to go to Kuwait, to refute the allegations that Iraqi troops had removed Kuwaiti babies from respirators. The trip became a fiasco and a P.R. debacle for CNN, as the Iraqis refused to allow Wiener's crew to report fully what they saw: CNN was accused of carrying water for Saddam. The film shows this, but does not mention that the Kuwaiti doctor CNN interviewed was, reportedly, later executed.)

The viewer has almost forgotten about that unresolved question when the film returns to it, at the very end. Wiener and Hadithi are walking through the devastation of Baghdad for the last time. The two acknowledge that they have become friends. Wiener says, "You kept your word and you were fair." Hadithi -- played with exquisite, almost malevolent refinement by David Suchet, who conveys with scarcely perceptible brush strokes the struggle for human decency of a man operating within iron constraints -- replies, "And you got your story." "Not the one I wanted," replies Wiener. To which Hadithi asks the film's final question: "Isn't it?" To which Wiener, and we, can say nothing. It's a singularly graceful way of closing the circle, and opening a question no reporter can honestly answer.

The film's second deviation from the book is even more predictable: Love interest! That writers would pour an industrial-size can of sex on a script would normally hardly be worth commenting on: Movies have always resembled those '50s paperbacks in which the cover of "Moby-Dick" features a busty blonde being menaced by a lunging sperm whale. But this particular discrepancy -- in a movie that, while no documentary, is largely accurate to the book -- is peculiar enough to be worth comment.

The character in question is Ingrid Formanek, Wiener's fellow producer. A striking-looking woman, always in black with silver bracelets up her arms, she is described in the book as having "the spirit of a wild mustang and the soul of a wide-eyed child." In the book, Wiener lavishes praises on Formanek as a brilliant producer; she comes across as an eccentric, formidable, larger-than-life figure, funny, profane and utterly dedicated to her job and her team -- a consummate pro. For Wiener, she's an old comrade-in-arms who covered stories with him all over the world. There's not a word about any hanky-panky. Wiener is married, with two kids; he describes making a poignant phone call to his wife before making the fateful decision to remain in Baghdad as the rest of the press corps flees.

To be sure, covering war from the front lines is not the best place to test one's fidelity. All the male journalists in Iraq are suffering from what Wiener calls Deadly Sperm Backup. His team is working insanely long hours close together under incredible pressure. And he and the delectable and incredibly talented Ingrid seem to get shitfaced on vodka every night. But despite these numerous unmarked open manholes leading to the greased slide of marital perdition, there's no suggestion that Wiener ever even thinks about solving his DSB problem in her bespangled Czech arms. Formanek's stock phrase, when anyone hits on her, is to bellow out, "It ain't war yet!" (After the war starts, she replaces this with the equally world-class demurral, "Not now, I'm busy!") But in the book she never has occasion to use either of these phrases on Wiener.

In the movie ... well, suffice it to say that not since Pyramus and Thisbe lusted through the wall has this kind of mutual, man-I-suuure-would-like-to reckless eyeballing gone down. The smoldering passion that burns between them apparently forces them to carry out all their conversations at a distance of three inches. Keaton's Wiener wins the Jimmy Carter award for Lusting After Another Woman in His Heart, and Carter seems to spend more time wearing her I'm-smiling-before-I-cry, I'm-ripping-myself-away-from-your-gaze expression than she does doing journalism.

Within the presumably bogus terms of the film (Wiener -- who was one of the scriptwriters -- told the Houston Chronicle that he was unhappy with the way Formanek was presented) the nonconsummated romance works. There's chemistry between Keaton and Carter, cut with mournful intelligence: They both look like they know what the other person is thinking, but know they can't make the final move. The problem is with the character of Formanek: The wistful-woman-in-love bit dominates, shoving the wisecracking, hard-drinking comrade to the side. The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but if the film had to have a love story, more Beatrice and Benedict and less Beatrice and Dante would have felt truer, and added the right touch of bitterness to what becomes a slightly syrupy romantic drink. Where are Myrna Loy and William Powell? John Steed and Emma Peel? But that's Hollywood love for you -- why settle for a fully functioning female heart when a dented, or better still a completely broken one, is available? It's a shame, because despite her gorgeous little-doll face, Carter seems capable of playing a woman as fiery and independent as Formanek.

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