Film review: State of Play

Published on Thursday 23 April 2009 19:41

*** (12A) DIRECTED BY: KEVIN MACDONALD STARRING: RUSSELL CROWE, BEN AFFLECK, RACHEL MCADAMS, HELEN MIRREN

THERE'S such a dearth of intelligent mainstream thrillers aimed squarely at adult filmgoers these days that it seems a little churlish to beat up on State of Play just because it doesn't come close to topping the excellent Paul Abbott-scripted BBC series upon which it is based. Directed by The Last King of Scotland's Kevin Macdonald and starring Russell Crowe as an old-school print journalist battling obsolescence by using his well-honed investigative skills to crack open a big story about political corruption and corporate malfeasance, it's a grown-up film that doesn't feel the need to bury its real-world resonances beneath layers of comic-book movie subterfuge or action film theatrics.

There is certainly pleasure to be had in that, but its status as an increasingly rare breed of film for an increasingly ill-served audience is not enough to qualify it for automatic praise, especially when it represents the kind of film-making that reckons the best way to meet the challenge laid down by the surge of cutting-edge British and American television drama in recent years is by serving up a self-satisfied throwback to 1970s conspiracy thrillers such as All the President's Men, The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor.

Yeah, yeah, those are great films, but film-making didn't end in the 1970s and it's a shame Macdonald didn't work a little harder to find a more up-to-date way to tell his story. Next to the original State of Play, or the final season of HBO's The Wire – both of which provided convincing insights into the realities and complexities of modern journalism – Macdonald's film trades in clich, with set-pieces taking place in underground parking garages, the Watergate building and run-down motel rooms wired-up with surveillance cameras. Though partly the fault of a committee-driven script from a trio of A-list screenwriters with a particular bent for this kind of nostalgia – it was written by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton), Michael Carnahan (Lions for Lambs) and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass) – there was no need for Macdonald to be so backwards-thinking.

Look at Zodiac. That was a newspaper film set in the 1970s, but the way David Fincher structured and shot it made it feel thoroughly new and relevant; it wasn't some slavish copy of the movies that influenced it. By contrast, State of Play feels like a modern story that has been time-warped into the past, so much so that whenever someone whips out a mobile phone or goes online it almost feels anachronistic.

That's no doubt partly the point. In moving the story from London to Washington, Crowe's character, Cal McAffrey, is now defined by his prehistoric status as a technophobic reporter who prefers pens to PDAs and believes in getting his facts and information straight rather than speculatively sounding off about a story online (the detrimental effect of opinion-laced blogging on fact-based journalism is one of the few new ideas the film brings to the table). Mercifully, Crowe is skilled enough to draw us into this world, even rising above some of Macdonald's hoarier character-establishing shots (hey, he's got an Irish name, let's show him listening to The Pogues; hey he's a journalist, let's give him a gut and a crappy car filled with junk). Crowe makes it easy for us relate to the profound sense of loss McAffrey feels at what may be the final passing of an age in which being a newspaper man (or woman) can still, on occasion, mean something.

This should also be a perfect set-up for a terse generational conflict with the new breed of journalist represented in the film by Rachel McAdams's Della Frye, a paid blogger, who, according to her editor at the fictional Washington Globe (an underused Helen Mirren), is cheap and files every hour. Curiously, though, Macdonald chooses to bump that story by making her quickly see the value of McAffrey's old-fashioned ways. As the stories they're working on separately show signs of a connection, she becomes his eager protge, and their dynamic all but fizzles out. Instead, Macdonald concentrates his attention on getting to grips with the main bulk of the plot, which revolves around Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), whose senate investigation – into the operation of a huge, multinational conglomerate, in line to take over a multibillion-dollar contract to run Homeland Security as a private organisation – is thrown for a loop by the sudden death of his lead researcher.

That's hot news, not least because he was having an affair with her at the time. But McAffrey's intrepid hack suspects a bigger story, one complicated not only by the fact that Collins is McAffrey's old college roommate, but that there exists some sexual history between McAffrey and Collins's wife (Robin Wright Penn). Alas, Macdonald doesn't seem to know what to do with this kind of character detail. He flirts with exploring notions of compromised ethics, but never weaves it into the story in a way that adds much tension to his protagonist's quest, preferring instead to keep the dense story moving quickly enough so you don't have time to ponder some of its plot holes. To his credit, that strategy can be reasonably effective and for much of its running time this is serviceable entertainment. But start pulling at the loose threads it leaves hanging and the whole film begins to unravel.