State of Play

It is best to remember that the twisted mystery in which Ben Affleck’s character, one Congressman Collins, entangles himself does not bear careful examination. It is convoluted and raises more questions that the film ultimately answers. The real power in director Kevin (The Last King of Scotland) Macdonald’s political thriller is in Russell Crowe’s star-powered performance as the reporter who manages to unravel it all.

It’s not an easy task, but Crowe, playing a methodical, tenacious old-school hard-news reporter makes it look easy. He inhabits the role with such rumpled grace that, as with many of his best roles, the character emerges and remains a dominate force in the film as a whole. The movie becomes less about the mystery itself and more about how Crowe’s Cal McAffrey goes about solving it all.

Much is being made of the issues confronting the film’s fictional Washington Globe, which is helmed by the always solid and compelling Helen Mirren as Cameron Lynne. McAffrey laments that the decline of the newspaper in America leaves the public with little but news blogs which are lacking in true content and often devoid of facts. McAffrey advocates instead the traditional solid, factual reporting on which the Fourth Estate has been built. It‘s a discussion the movie does address, albeit weakly, and a topical one in light of major newspaper failures in the U.S. (most recently Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer). But in the end this film is a political thriller, a Russell Crowe movie (or a Ben Affleck movie, if you’re one of the many misguided moviegoers out there who think Casey's lesser-talented older brother can carry a film) and little more.

Though Crowe really goes a long way in carrying this film (or at least compensating for its story weaknesses and for the lackluster performance of his costar Affleck), credit must be given to the supporting cast: Rachel McAdams as Crowe’s rookie reporter partner who learns what real journalism is all about; Helen Mirren as the paper’s managing editor, torn between her responsibility as a newspaper editor and her charge to turn a profit for the paper’s owners; Robin Wright Penn as the beleaguered wife of Congressman Collins; and Jason Bateman, who delivers a small but brilliantly executed performance as a seedy marketing consultant on whom the plot turns in the film’s third act.

State of Play delivers solid performances and nearly two hours of genuine entertainment. Just don’t read too much into it otherwise. There is less written between those lines than you might think.