Russell Crowe plays old-school journalist Cal McAffrey in this big-screen adaptation of the popular Brit-TV miniseries. While the script on this thriller is a bit too convoluted to pull the viewer in on its own merits, the ensemble cast has enough heart and soul to keep us vested for the duration, especially Crowe, who recasts the image of the hard-boiled ace. Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren and Jason Bateman bring their A-game as well, ensuring even the most anemic presence (Ben Affleck) doesn't bring down the whole exercise.
Starring : Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman and Robin Wright Penn.
Rating: Three and a half stars out of five
Political scandal, government corruption, unsavory sexual trysts and more liars in each frame than a photo album full of Wall Street hucksters, State of Play has just about everything a great movie needs -- and a whole lot more.
This new movie from The Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald features a competent news reporter as the central protagonist.
Back in the old days of healthy mass media, finding a newsies in the leading role wasn't a big deal. If anything, it practically bordered on cliche. But now that legitimate newsgathering is bordering on obsolescence and growing numbers of respected journalists find themselves out of work, seeing a bona fide scribe as a larger-than-life screen hero is enough to make an aging movie critic rejoice.
Granted, a lot of the goodwill State of Play generates in its opening scenes is really a matter of nostalgia as we watch bedraggled journalist Cal McAffrey scoot around D.C. in his rusty old Saab, but so what?
Few characters in all of filmdom are as compelling as a cranky, rude, but always noble journalist capable of sniffing out a juicy scandal faster than a truffle pig. And in the capable hands of Russell Crowe, even the most jaded viewer will be reduced to cynic putty as he single-handedly jump starts the sputtering image of the big city reporter with commitment and compassion.
The script isn't always there to meet the challenge, but with Matthew Michael Carnahan's fingerprints on any draft there's always a risk: Carnahan wrote two of the most painfully self-conscious scripts produced over the past decade in Lions for Lambs and The Kingdom.
You can feel Carnahan's talent for lacklustre pretension lurking behind the lines and a near-incomprehensible plot, but thanks to the endless depth of the onscreen talents and Macdonald's intuitive direction, State of Play manages to overcome its internal weakness by pulling together a compelling stream of dramatic moments.
These moments lack a larger context for the better part of the film, but being slightly confused over the course of a sleuth story is an inherent part of the experience.
We have to put the pieces together in tandem with the onscreen problem-solver, and in this case, it means watching Crowe crawl through one political wormhole after another as he attempts to find out what happened to a young researcher and aide working on the Hill.
Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer) was working for Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) when she appears to have been thrown under a train -- literally.
The cops can't get ahead in the investigation because the accident happened in a security camera blind spot, but Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) has a special source: Stephen Collins.
The two men once shared a dorm room together in college, and even competed for the same gal (Robin Wright Penn), but now they need to share information because Collins' political career is on the precipice: He was having an extra-marital affair with the dead woman, and if the media discover she was pregnant, his image as a moral standard-bearer will be destroyed.
When McAffrey starts digging into the dirt, he exposes some strange government roots to the story because Baker, the dead aide, was conducting research on a private corporation bidding on the Homeland Security contract.
Once McAffrey starts yanking on the subterranean tendrils, he pulls out a nest of collusion and corruption that tracks all the way into his own newsroom.
The story shivers with real world similarities, but because there are no "Eureka!" moments over the course of the narrative, and there's no unveiling of a single enemy, the movie cannot sweep the viewer off his or her feet. You have to work for resolution -- just like Cal.
Crowe has no problem making us believe in his character. A little pudgy, a little quiet and entirely unkempt, Crowe looks like the last old-school journo standing -- and he seems to like it.
Rachel McAdams isn't given that much screen time, but in the character of daily blogger Della Frye, she cranks out added value as the foil to McAffrey's old-fangled ways. A little more repartee and witty banter would have gone a long way with these two characters. By the same token, a little less screen time for the ever-leaden Ben Affleck would have been welcome, as well.
State of Play has flaws and some of them, like Affleck's wet toast presence, nag for the duration.
Fortunately, there are some wonderfully smart and funny moments lurking around each corner -- in addition to a palpable love of newspapers frothing in each frame -- to keep State of Play lurching forward. It's not pretty. It's not even graceful, but the film is desperate to prove it's got heart and soul in a wasteland of modern mass media.
