“STATE OF PLAY,” a political thriller starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Helen Mirren that opens on April 17, is the ultimate makeover: a two-hour movie, set in Washington that used to be a six-part BBC mini-series.
The original “State of Play,” a popular and a critical success when it was broadcast in Britain in 2003, started with the murder of the girlfriend of a married member of Parliament, and went on to discover corruption and betrayal in government, in the press and even on a personal level. The story bristled with class tension of a sort that exists only in England, and wrung a lot of mileage from the habits of Fleet Street, with its cutthroat competition and checkbook journalism.
“State of Play,” in short, seemed so British — and so unshrinkable a story, with characters of unusual depth and complexity — that a number of people involved in the film version weren’t sure at first that boiling it down and moving it to the United States made much sense. For a start the class issues had to go. And to replace the cynicism and sleaziness of Fleet Street the filmmakers had to come up with a new story about the beleaguered state of the American newspaper business. The new “State of Play” winds up turning Russell Crowe, of all people, into a defender of the journalistic faith.
“I loved the series, but it never crossed my mind you could make it into a film,” the movie’s director, Kevin Macdonald, said in late March, talking on his cellphone from the back of a London taxicab. And even when he was shown a script, he added, he had a lot of reservations. “It’s sort of like what they say about books,” he said. “You know, good books make bad movies, and it’s better to make a movie from a bad book. This was a very good series, and I worried that we would just let down all the people who loved the original.”
What changed his mind, he added, was his realization that the emotional core of “State of Play” involved themes of friendship and loyalty that could be translated anywhere. And that very few Americans knew anything about the series was actually an advantage.
Translating some of the details proved to be easy, said Mr. Macdonald and Andrew Hauptman, the American producer who bought the rights to the series. The member of Parliament became an up-and-coming congressman. No problem. One of the villains in the British piece, a shadow oil company, became a Blackwater-like military contractor, which is even better. Black helicopters could buzz spookily around. And transferring the Fleet Street tabloid wars into the newsroom of a struggling paper, The Washington Globe, riven between journalists of the old school and the new, was probably a plus as well.
Much harder was shrinking the story to two hours. Mr. Hauptman and Matthew Michael Carnahan, the film’s original writer (whose credits include “The Kingdom” and “Lions for Lambs”), mapped out the entire series and then began eliminating things that didn’t seem essential. They were encouraged by Paul Abbott, creator of the BBC’s “State of Play,” who told them the amount of new information added over the six hours wasn’t as much as they thought. “In some ways the series is just a great piece of six-hour tap dancing,” Mr. Macdonald said.
But Mr. Carnahan’s script was still very long, and when Mr. Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) came on board, he hired two new writers, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, to simplify it.
Entire characters were dropped, like a brash young journalist with father-son issues, played by James McAvoy in the original. “That was gut-wrenching,” Mr. Hauptman said. And one of the last things to go was an affair between Cal McAffrey, the lead journalist and a friend of the accused member of Parliament, and the M.P.’s wife. It was probably the single strongest story line in the original, because of the way it moved some of the story’s larger themes into the bedroom. But in two hours, Mr. Macdonald said, there wasn’t room for it to be a believable relationship, so it became part of the back story instead, something that had happened in the past.
Eric Fellner, of Working Title Films, which co-produced the movie, also insisted that the resolution at the end be clearer. “You can have all sort of loose ends in a six-hour series that you can’t have in a movie,” he said. “Television and movies are ultimately very different. In TV it’s the beginning that counts. With movies it’s the last 15 minutes or so.”
Getting the movie made was “like a rodeo,” Mr. Hauptman said. At one point the producer Scott Rudin swept in, and then out again. Edward Zwick was supposed to direct but lost interest. Brad Pitt was supposed to play Cal McAffrey (now the Russell Crowe role), but he split because of the proverbial “creative differences.” Edward Norton, who was supposed to play the congressman, ran into scheduling problems and was replaced by Mr. Affleck. And who was going to be the imperious, crafty newspaper editor leading the investigation, the part so memorably played in the original by Bill Nighy?
Ms. Mirren was Mr. Macdonald’s idea.
“For a while I thought of using Bill again,” he said. “He completely owned that role. But then I began worrying about the anxiety of influence. I was afraid I’d always be thinking, ‘Now, how did he do it in the series?’ I even thought of Robert Redford. Then I had a brainwave: we have to have a woman, an acerbic Brit, and it dawned on me. Helen. She’s strong, acerbic, witty — like Bill, very British. The idea of Tina Brown was very much on my mind too.”
For the newspaper scenes Mr. Macdonald built a newsroom in Culver City, Calif., that is even messier than the real thing. He spent a lot of time at The Washington Post, and hired its metro editor, R. B. Brenner, as an adviser. “My idea was, what if you took the newsroom of ‘All the President’s Men,’ clean and crisp, with that ’70s architecture and bright primary colors, and imagined that it hadn’t been cleaned up in 30 years?” Mr. Macdonald said. “That sort of reflects the difference in how journalists are perceived now.”
He added that he was particularly pleased at the way the movie beefed up the character of Della, a young Scottish reporter played by Kelly Macdonald in the original, and turned her into a blogger (played by Rachel McAdams) who is somewhat at odds with Mr. Crowe’s old-school, shoe-leather character. “You’ve the blogosphere versus the print media,” Mr. Macdonald said. “If ‘All the President’s Men’ was what it was like in 1974, this is the way it is now.”
Praising Mr. Crowe’s performance, he said: “The great thing about Russell is that he’s so unvain. I explained to him that this guy is a bit of a schlub, a bit of a loser, he lives in the kind of apartment where you would never have people over, and Russell got that right away.”
“The interesting thing,” he added, “is that Russell had such contempt for the press to begin with. He hates reporters. It took him a while to acknowledge that there could be such a thing as journalists who were idealistic and incorruptible.”
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"The great thing about Russell is that he’s so unvain. I explained to him that this guy is a bit of a schlub, a bit of a loser, he lives in the kind of apartment where you would never have people over, and Russell got that right away.”
Finally, a review from a major source, and it's pretty favorable, including for Crowe (who of course, despite the impression some might want to give, is not the sole reason for this film). Nice to see a potentially good film this time of the year.
From Variety -
State of Play (U.S.-U.K.)A Universal release of a Universal Pictures (U.S.) and Working Title Films (U.K.) presentation, in association with StudioCanal and Relativity Media, of an Andell Entertainment/Bevan-Fellner (U.S.) production. Produced by Andrew Hauptman, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner. Executive producers, Paul Abbott, Liza Chasin, Debra Hayward, E. Bennett Walsh. Co-producer, Eric Hayes. Directed by Kevin Macdonald. Screenplay, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, Billy Ray, based on the BBC television series created by Paul Abbott.
Cal McAffrey - Russell Crowe Stephen Collins - Ben Affleck Della Frye - Rachel McAdams Cameron Lynne - Helen Mirren Anne Collins - Robin Wright Penn Dominic Foy - Jason Bateman Rep. George Fergus - Jeff Daniels
By TODD MCCARTHYWill "State of Play" be the last feature film to commemorate the physical printing and shipping of a big-city daily newspaper (as it does in almost ennobling fashion behind the end credits)? Is this also the last gasp for movies about crusading journalists, a tradition dating back to the early '30s? Whatever the answers, this efficient, admirably coherent thriller about reporters digging down to where politics and murder meet in Washington, D.C., has a wistful air about it as regards the fourth estate at a time when the profession is dangling by a thread. A tangy Russell Crowe performance and an intriguing story look to produce reasonable B.O. in wide release. Kevin Macdonald's first big studio feature reps a heavily compressed recapitulation of the bang-up, six-hour 2003 BBC miniseries written by Paul Abbott and directed by David Yates. Widely admired on both sides of the Pond, the original featured gritty London atmosphere, a raft of deftly sketched bit characters and lots of quotidian detail that a streamlined, conventional-length feature simply doesn't have time for, and was sufficiently potent at its core to upset the sitting Labour government.
Shifting the action to recent Washington (with the fumes of the Bush administration still lingering) changes the tenor right off the bat, as does the distinctly Yank lingo penned by a succession of writers: Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray.
But the setup is the same: A desperately fleeing young man is gunned down on the street, a bicycling witness is also shot and gravely wounded, while, in a seemingly unrelated incident, beautiful young Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer) mysteriously meets her end under the wheels of a subway train.
Sonia worked for rising U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), but circumstances soon force him to admit they were having an affair. If it were as simple as that, he and wife Anne (Robin Wright Penn) would soon be able to put it all behind them in the time-tested Beltway manner. But there is much, much more to the story, as disheveled vet Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) and the paper's pert upstart blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) soon realize.
Pic's nostalgia for enterprising, old-time journalism -- the sort immortalized in fast-talking Depression-era Warner Bros. quickies through "All the President's Men," "Zodiac" and many in between -- begins with Cal's diet (Goldfish, double cheeseburgers with chili) and resulting paunch, choice of automobile (a beat-up 1990 Saab), scruffy wardrobe, office-drawer whiskey bottle and rat's nest of a cubicle piled high with yellowing paper. The only things missing are the visor, cuffs and dangling cigarette.
In most circumstances, Cal would let the chips fall where they may, but Stephen was his college roommate and best friend -- at least, until Cal slept with Anne. Nevertheless, Cal offers his old pal PR advice on how to best handle the crisis, but when things begin spinning into uncharted territory, Cal's moral compass proves as unsteady as anyone else's.
A significant new element in this American version is the introduction of a standard-issue corporate villain, PointCorp, a Halliburton-like behemoth with deep ties to the administration. While the presence of such an easy villain may give weight to the journalistic side of things, its conventionality somewhat cheapens the drama.
From the outset, the film acknowledges the threat looming over mainstream journalism, first with the testy condescension with which old pro Cal treats know-it-all Della, and repeatedly with the remarks of editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren) about the commercial pressures brought to bear by the paper's new corporate owners. In fact, Cameron appears so preoccupied she's barely able to function, reduced to pacing and fretting while firing off the occasional nasty zinger. Mirren could no doubt have done much more with the role given the opportunity, but it's been so truncated she can't come close to the marvels Bill Nighy wrought with the same part on TV.
The other role to suffer in comparison is that of Anne Collins, originally played with gusto by Polly Walker. In the earlier telling, she and Cal launch into an irresistible but ill-advised affair part-way through the story. Here, the indiscretion took place in the past but continues to exert an ambiguous but thoroughly unconvincing pull on her. Anne has been far too sanitized and conformed, and she's much too classy a woman to even consider any future with the unwashed Cal.
But Macdonald -- who flashed impressive journalistic chops in his documentaries, notably "One Day in September," and displayed an affinity for politics in "The Last King of Scotland" -- has a real feel for the expose/thriller aspects of the story, and commendably delivers the essentials, cramming a good deal into a little over two hours.
Eschewing trendy mannerisms, he makes sure the complicated action and numerous characters remain clear enough to follow and keeps the backgrounds alive and interesting. Journalistic insiders may get a derisive snort out of newsroom scenes anachronistically crammed with busy, gainfully employed workers, but might at the same time privately relish them as a last hurrah for a vanishing tradition.
McAdams is a lively presence as always, but her role (played in the miniseries by Kelly Macdonald) is devoid of any personal life or backstory, or even of much fluctuating opinion about her professional partner. Affleck has no problem conveying the upright, professional bearing of his politico (played in Britain by David Morrissey), but doesn't offer much more.
There are many juicy supporting perfs, however, beginning with those of Jason Bateman as a spineless PR man pressured into revealing confidential information and Jeff Daniels as a priggish congressman who lapses into knee-jerk patriotism and moral uprightness when threatened.
In the end, though, it's Crowe who must carry the most freight, which he does with another characterization to relish. Still bulky, although not as much so as in "Body of Lies," long-tressed and somewhat grizzled, he finds the gist of the affable eccentricity, natural obsessiveness and mainstream contrarianism that marks many professional journalists. Crowe may always have been a brilliant character actor hiding inside a leading man's body, but with age, the former is coming to the fore, which promises an interesting evolution. Although the role of Cal was played by John Simm in 1993, Crowe's part actually merges two roles from the original, embracing as well another journo played by James McAvoy.
Hollywood Reporter is more mixed, calling it routine and saying the supporting performances are better than the leads, which are called "histrionic."
Film Review: State of Play By Kirk Honeycutt, April 13, 2009 06:52 ET
Bottom Line: Political mystery-thriller lacks credibility throughout. The peril in building a murder mystery/thriller around a journalist is that a reporter is not a cop. Yet just about everything Russell Crowe does in "State of Play," playing D.C. reporter Cal McAffrey, relates to police work, not journalism. He visits an autopsy room, withholds evidence, grills a witness in a safe house, comes under fire more than once and nails the perp in the final scene. Funnily enough, he seldom has deadlines or writes anything.
"State of Play" makes for a reasonably good though highly implausible edge-of-your-seater as long as disbelief is suspended regarding everyone's professional duties. Reporters, cops, politicians -- no one behaves as they should. Perhaps that's what writers Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, Billy Ray and director Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland") have in mind, though: that the roles of the media, government and police have grown fuzzy as everyone is motivated more by self-interest and self-preservation than any search for the truth.
The film looks like a solid midrange performer. There is nothing we haven't seen here before in terms of chases, intrigue and betrayals, so for all its A-list cast and production values, the film comes off as routine.
The script is based on a 2003 BBC miniseries written by Paul Abbott, which took place in London, but the transition to our nation's capital works surprisingly well. Today's bloggers nicely imitate Fleet Street, and a politician with zipper issues and concerns over private defense contractors are virtually ripped from the headlines.
Both productions feature these key ingredients: The seemingly random deaths of a young junkie shot execution style and a legislator's attractive research assistant in a subway accident that might be a suicide prove to be related and a reporter takes advantage of -- exploits? -- an old friendship with a legislator and his wife to get insider information. It's then a race among a news outlet, the police and government minions to ferret out the truth, though at least one of those estates probably wants the truth buried.
Crowe's Cal went to school with rising Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), knows his wife (Robin Wright Penn) better than a friend should and has an editor (Helen Mirren) under pressure from new corporate bosses. Consequently, there are so many conflicts of interest and ethical breaches contained within his every move that one ceases to keep track.
The film pays lip service to the fading power and resources of an old-fashioned newspaper but prefers to wallow in nostalgia for the pre-Internet days. Cal is paired with what once would have been a "cub" reporter but is now a blogger, Dalle (Rachel McAdams). He -- and the movie -- think ill of blogger. One line of dialogue even contains this linkage: "bloodsuckers and bloggers."
This gives their partnership its conflict, but the writers should have paid more attention to how bloggers operate and how that affects a newsroom. The story these two work on for days as the mystery unravels would have leaked here and there on an hourly basis. By the time of the perp's arrest, their "scoop" would be long gone. Dalle should have been posting as the investigation goes on, driving Cal nuts but giving the film a true ticking clock.
Gaps in logic are everywhere. The dead junkie's girlfriend comes to Cal and hand delivers crucial evidence. How does she know to go to him? The final twist might be one too many, something a writer dreams up rather than a credible outgrowth of the character relations as developed to that point.
The film's melodrama is too intense for the main actors, forcing everyone to histrionic levels and undermining performances. Consequently, better work appears in smaller roles such as Wright Penn, Jason Bateman as a PR hack and Jeff Daniels as an smarmy congressman.
Web of Deceit Russell Crowe powers a brawnier remake of the brainy British mini-series State of Play. Add a Comment 1 Comment | Add Yours 00Comments | Add Yours By David Edelstein Published Apr 12, 2009
(Photo: Glen Wilson/Courtesy of Universal Pictures)
In the taut American remake of the British mini-series State of Play, director Kevin Macdonald hints early and often at a vast conspiracy underlying the seemingly unrelated deaths of a junkie-thief and the mistress of a hotshot U.S. congressman (Ben Affleck)—one that emanates from the most powerful sphere of the military-industrial complex. The journalists digging into the story (Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams) are photographed through windows or from high above, while in the background loom national icons (the Washington Monument, the Capitol) in silent rebuke of perverted American ideals. It’s gripping stuff—very Alan Pakula, very All the President’s Men—and Crowe’s restless energy (he can’t stay put even long enough to wash his straggly hair) gives the convoluted plot an edgy momentum. The problem—and I’ll endeavor not to spoil anything—is the resolution. It’s tricky, it’s surprising, and it’s largely faithful to the original mini-series, but in context it’s a nonevent. It’s like a time bomb that’s never dismantled but never explodes. The movie is good enough that the ending leaves you … not angry, exactly. Unfulfilled.
Before I continue, you’re probably sick of critics going on about adaptations that fall short of their sources. Chances are you don’t know the original and don’t much care about changes; the question is, “Does the remake work on its own terms?” But when a new film doesn’t click (and most Hollywood remakes of foreign movies are duds), it helps to know what its makers were aiming to reproduce. In this case, Paul Abbott’s six-hour mini-series was a close look at two machines—one journalistic, one governmental—and the individuals chewed up in their gears. It was also a paranoid conspiracy thriller (and a nail-biter), but you sensed that it wouldn’t come down to a chase or gun battle, that the answers would be in the characters’ faces, in secrets even the closest of friends couldn’t detect. The new script (credited to Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, and Billy Ray) is a stew of topical headlines: the unchecked power of a Blackwater-like security firm, the financial peril of daily newspapers, the rise of gossipy bloggers. The allusions add punch and the Pakula-esque red herrings ratchet up the suspense, but it’s all essentially beside the point.
The point is blunted, anyway, because the new State of Play is a study in stars’ noncombustion. Driven investigative reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) and driven U.S. congressman Stephen Collins were college roommates turned reluctant adversaries; now, after someone pitches the politician’s mistress under a D.C. metro train, they’re uneasy allies. Their relationship should be the core of the movie. But Crowe and Affleck don’t fit onscreen—they don’t inhabit the same existential space. Crowe is a transformer—his actor’s DNA changes in every role—and you feel McAffrey’s febrile mind racing to resolve his conflicting loyalties. Whereas Affleck is, as always, Lumpy Ben: slack-jawed, dopey, not quite broken in. He might be smart and thoughtful in life and Crowe a Cro-Magnon, but as an actor his wheels turn too slowly to keep up. At least Affleck is temperamentally suited to the part—that opaque, conventionally good-looking, Al Gore–ish effect is the reason, we infer, that Collins went into politics. And he keeps you off-balance: Is it Affleck or Collins who’s the bad actor? Or is it both?
While we wonder, Macdonald keeps the characters in motion: Why should anyone converse sitting down when they could be striding briskly down hallways? Until the botched climax, the movie flies along, with excellent actors bobbing in and out. It was a neat idea to make McAdams’s character a cheeky Capitol Hill blogger and, as such, an affront to McAffrey’s journalistic scruples. (Too bad that after a confrontational start she settles into the role of sidekick and apparently stops blogging—she doesn’t even moan about the pressure of having to post.) Robin Wright Penn brings amazing depth of emotion to Collins’s wife, with whom McAffrey once had an affair. ****ed off, humiliated, she allows herself no extraneous gestures—all her effort is channeled into holding herself together. (She recalls poor Silda Spitzer standing by her man.) As the editor of the “Washington Globe,” Helen Mirren is perfection. Watch how abruptly she shifts from solicitous to conspiratorially chummy to sharp and imperious—anything to get what she needs from her reporters, and thereby keep her endangered newspaper afloat. At some point I began to see her as the guiding spirit of this State of Play, standing in for producers with a studio breathing down their necks: Let’s take this cerebral British mini-series and spice it up without making it too tabloid, and let’s bring it in under two hours!
I've been waiting for this one for a while ever since I saw the trailer. First you see Crowe and Affleck and I thought "meh, okay". Then McAdams appeared and I thought "sold!". Then came Mirren...then Daniels...then Bateman...then Robin Wright Penn...whoa, where's my ticket?
Grammy FYC: Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak; Black Eyed Peas, The E.N.D.; John Legend, Evolver; Paolo Nutini, Sunny Side Up; David Guetta, One Love; Kelly Clarkson, "Already Gone"; Jordin Sparks, "Battlefield"; Kings Of Leon, "Use Somebody"; Maxwell, "Pretty Wings"
J Hoberman of the Village Voice is favorable, although he says it falls short of the original mini-series. Again, most of acting comments are about the supporting cast.
Affleck, Crowe Pump Adrenaline into a Dying Industry in State of Play By J. Hoberman published: April 15, 2009 Glen Wilson
A very authentic cubicle Details: State of Play Directed by Kevin Macdonald Universal Pictures Opens April 17Kevin Macdonald's Washington thriller is a bellows designed to puff up the most beaten-down reporter's chest. Compressed from the highly regarded BBC miniseries first telecast in 2003, State of Play is an effectively involving journalism-cum-conspiracy yarn with a bang-bang opening and a frantic closer. There are more than a few loose ends left hanging when the case slams shut, but it all makes sense, at least until you have a moment to think about it.
Having replaced Brad Pitt (who reportedly dropped out in a dispute over the script), Russell Crowe heads the high-powered cast as an old-school journo—which is to say, a bearish slob with printer's ink in his veins and whiskey on his breath. As his foil, Ben Affleck plays an eminently presentable congressman, reform-minded but morally compromised, whose young research assistant dies in suspicious circumstances under the wheels of the Washington metro the very morning he's set to open televised hearings into the doings of a Blackwatery defense-contracting megalith. Affleck walks tearfully off the Hill and arrives at Crowe's hovel, blubbering that the reporter is the only friend he's got. Seems unlikely, but it turns out that the two were college roommates—a relationship complicated by a shared romantic interest in the fellow alum who became the congressman's wife (Robin Wright Penn).
Professional ethics are stretched to the breaking point as conflicts of interest proliferate; the erotic tension gets largely sublimated into Crowe's initially adversarial but ultimately mentoring relationship with the cute young blogger (Rachel McAdams) on his newspaper's political smarm beat. As unrelated murder cases dovetail, Crowe initiates the bright-eyed blogette into the mystery of MSM shoe-leather reporting. It all leads to a vast conspiracy—although the $40 billion that the corporate baddies hope to realize from privatized homeland security seems a bit chintzy compared to the AIG bailout. Indeed, the crusty, seen-it-all editor-in-chief (Helen Mirren)—who disses Crowe's veteran reporter as a "geezer" and counters his every crazy, brilliant lead with a sniff that "the real story is the sinking of this bloody newspaper"—is singularly unimpressed.
The BBC miniseries had the luxury of character psychology, but, for all its interest in the ambivalent state of affairs that exists between politicians, the press, and the minions of P.R. (Jason Bateman in an expertly comic turn), State of Play is mainly an action film. There's no way that a two-hour movie can plumb the depths of these various emotional entanglements—or the tragic dimension shared by the two protagonists, ruined politician and tormented newshound. Affleck adds a dash of righteousness to his character, but Crowe is the sole justice-fighter. Working a half-step ahead of the curiously compliant cops and faced with Mirren's impossible deadlines, he tosses off the line "Yes, we can," as he hustles from the newsroom to do some extreme investigative reporting—that is, the kind where you get shot at by a source. Typically in an underground parking garage.
For journalists, however, the movie's irresistible hook is the death-of-newsprint backstory—which comes complete with a utopian vision of a brave new world in which frisky cyber-snoops are eager Girl Fridays to their typewriting seniors. Although the arch-scold Mirren's anxious diatribes seldom fail to mention that the newspaper has just been purchased and is now under cost-conscious management, we never learn this new boss's identity. (The worldwide conspiracy doesn't go that far into media manipulation.)
State of Play is a deeply nostalgic movie. During the Depression, it might have been played for screwball comedy; 60-something years ago, it could have served as the basis for a private-eye story. Its heart, however, is in the '70s—the days when political conspiracy was hot stuff, investigative reporters strode the earth like so many grubby colossi, a journalist's greatest allegiance was to follow the story, and the promise of a shared byline was a bond stronger than sex.
Another mildly favorable review, this time a 3 star one from Roger Ebert. Everyone says it feels rushed, is confusing, but has worthy elements.
State of Play
/ / / April 15, 2009
Cast & CreditsCal McAffrey Russell Crowe Stephen Collins Ben Affleck Della Frye Rachel McAdams Cameron Lynne Helen Mirren Anne Collins Robin Wright Penn Dominic Foy Jason Bateman Rep. Fergus Jeff Daniels
Universal presents a film directed by Kevin Macdonald. Screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, based on the BBC series created by Paul Abbott. Running time: 127 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some violence, language including sexual references, and brief drug content)
by Roger Ebert
"State of Play" is a smart, ingenious thriller set in the halls of Congress and the city room of a newspaper not unlike the Washington Post. It's also a political movie; its villain a shadowy corporation that contracts with the government for security duties and mercenaries in Iraq. The name is PointCorp. Think Blackwater. If an outfit like that would kill for hire, the plot wonders, would it also kill to protect its profits?
Here is Russell Crowe playing an ace investigative reporter for "The Washington Globe." All the cops and most of the people on Capitol Hill seem to know him; he's one of those instinctive newsmen who connects the dots so quickly that a 127-minute movie can be extracted from a six-hour BBC miniseries. This keeps him so occupied that he has little time for grooming, and doesn't seem to ever wash his lanky hair.
Crowe stepped into the role after Brad Pitt dropped out. Pitt, I suspect, would have looked more clean-cut, but might not have been as interesting as Crowe in this role as Cal McAffrey, a scruffy hero in a newspaper movie that is acutely aware of the crisis affecting newspapers. He becomes part of a team that involves not two experienced reporters, as in "All the President's Men," but Della (Rachel McAdams), one of the paper's plucky bloggers. He tries to teach her some ancient newspaper wisdom, such as: If you seem to be on the edge of uncovering an enormous political scandal, don't blow your cover by hurrying online with two-bit gossip.
In a short span of time, a man is shot dead in an alley; a passing bicyclist, also a witness, is killed, and a woman is shoved or jumps under a subway train. Cal covers all of these deaths in person. The dead woman was a researcher for Rep. Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), who breaks into tears during a congressional hearing into PointCorp, and confesses to conducting an affair with her. His wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn), plays the brave politician's wife and says their family will stay together. Anne and Cal were lovers in college. The dead man turns out to be carrying a briefcase stolen from PointCorp. Now we connect the dots.
There are many other surprises in the film, which genuinely fooled me a couple of times, and maintains a certain degree of credibility for a thriller. The implication is that PointCorp and the administration are locked in a an unholy alliance to channel millions of taxpayer dollars into unsavory hands. That this can all be untangled by one reporter who looks like a bum and another who looks like Rachel McAdams (which is no bad thing) goes with the territory.
An important role in their investigation is played by the Globe's editor, Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren). The paper's new corporate owners are on her neck to cut costs, redesign the venerable front page, get more scoops and go for the gossip today instead of waiting for the Pulitzer tomorrow. There is, in fact, an eerie valedictory feeling to the film; mother of God, can this be the last newspaper movie? (The answer is no, because no matter what happens to newspapers, the newspaper movie is a durable genre. Shouting "stop the presses!" is ever so much more exciting than shouting "stop the upload!")
It is a reliable truth that you should never ask an expert how a movie deals with his field of knowledge. Archeologists, for example, have raised questions about "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor." When Cal races out of the office at deadline and shouts over his shoulder, "Tell Cameron to kill the story," it is just possible that she would tear up the front page if the story was so important the paper could not risk being wrong. But when Cal and his sidekick the perky blogger solve the mystery and are back in the office and it is noted "Cameron has been holding the presses four hours!" -- I think her new corporate bosses will want to have a long, sad talk with her, after which she will discover if the company still offers severance packages.
"State of Play," directed by Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland"), is well-assembled and has some good performances. Crowe pulls off the Joaquin Phoenix look-alike; McAdams doesn't overplay her blogger's newbieness; Mirren convinced me she could be a newspaper editor. Wright Penn always finds the correct shadings. If Affleck, as he plays this role, were to have his face carved into Mt. Rushmore, people would ask which was the original.
The thing is, though, that the movie never quite attains altitude. It has a great takeoff, levels nicely, and then seems to land on autopilot. Maybe it's the problem of resolving so much plot in a finite length of time, but it seems a little too facile toward the end. Questions are answered, relationships revealed and mysteries solved too smoothly. If a corporation like PointCorp could have its skullduggery exposed that easily, it wouldn't still be in business.
Shouting "stop the presses!" is ever so much more exciting than shouting "stop the upload!")
LOL
WILLIAM PETERSEN: Well, this is a shock. The only explanation for this is that somehow in the last year, every one of you tried to act with rubber gloves and tweezers.
Posts: 6619 | Location: NY | Registered: December 01, 2002
Let's hope this article doesn't prove prescient - but unfortunately after Duplicity's flop, there is real concern.
Dismal fate may await 'State of Play' A low turnout for the Russell Crowe vehicle could have wider repercussions: sending the smart adult drama to the sidelines. By John Horn > > >
9:23 PM PDT, April 15, 2009
He makes $20 million a movie, won the best actor Oscar for "Gladiator" and enjoys his pick of Hollywood's choicest roles. But there's one thing that Russell Crowe can't do right now: sell movie tickets.
The actor's conspiracy thriller “State of Play” lands in theaters Friday and all indications suggest it will perform as poorly as (and possibly worse than) Crowe's previous film: last October's box-office bust "Body of Lies," which opened to $12.9 million and topped out at $39.4 million. Audience-tracking surveys show that "State of Play," which costars Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, will be trounced this weekend by Zac Efron's "17 Again" and may even finish behind the low-budget action film "Crank: High Voltage."
Universal Pictures, the film's producer and distributor, is hopeful "State of Play," adapted from an acclaimed 2003 British miniseries of the same name, could generate opening weekend ticket sales in excess of $10 million, with a potentially higher gross if the film's reviews, so far mostly positive, continue to run favorably. But $10-million openings are not why studios pay actors $20-million salaries, which is what Crowe received for "State of Play."
What's more, given the film's more than $60-million budget, "State of Play" will struggle to turn a profit -- its audience-tracking surveys place the film on the same box-office track as such recent duds as "The International," "The Pink Panther 2" and "Defiance."
While some of "State of Play's" likely lackluster performance will be blamed on Crowe, the 45-year-old Australian -- who is overweight and disheveled in the film's lead role as an investigative newspaper reporter -- is hardly the sole issue. Equally problematic is "State of Play's" genre: the highbrow adult drama, which is quickly becoming a big-studio relic.
Fans of sophisticated storytelling complain that hardly anyone makes smart dramas anymore, but the problem rests with the audience itself: It isn't supporting them.
Universal knows this all too well. Despite positive notices and Julia Roberts in a lead role, the studio's "Duplicity" has grossed only $37.3 million in the United States after opening March 20, and Universal's "Frost/Nixon" -- despite five Academy Award nominations, including best picture -- didn't even get to $19 million in domestic theaters.
Universal, like its peer studios, can hardly be blamed, then, for scrapping many of its planned dramas in favor of easier-to-market video game adaptations ("Bioshock"), toy titles ("Stretch Armstrong") and sequels ("Little Fockers," a fourth "Bourne" movie).
"You are going to find every studio saying, 'I can't do it, I can't do it,' " Donna Langley, Universal's production chief, says of the near-term prospects for dramas. "It will be awhile until there are a lot of really smart dramas."
In the last few months, the General Electric-owned studio has put the brakes on some of its most acclaimed dramatic projects, including writer-director Gary Ross' "The Free State of Jones," Spike Lee's "L.A. Riots," an adaptation of the Claire Messud novel "The Emperor's Children" and the AIDS drama "The Dallas Buyer's Club."
For years, Universal has been a reliable maker of smart, adult-oriented movies, and "State of Play" was a natural fit for the studio's programming philosophy.
"I was really attracted to the backdrop, the world, the environment," Langley says. "I love the collision of journalism, politics and big business."
The hope was a modern-day "Absence of Malice" crossed with "All the President's Men" and "Three Days of the Condor." "It's the kind of movie," Langley says almost wistfully, "that 10 years ago every studio was looking for."
Director Kevin Macdonald's ("The Last King of Scotland") adaptation of the British production maintains the miniseries' core conspiracy ideas, with several new (and American) twists.
Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, a journalist at a Washington, D.C., newspaper. McAdams costars as one of the paper's political bloggers, and the two reporters unearth a complicated plot that involves murder, extramarital affairs, rising-star congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck) and a nefarious military contractor.
It wasn't a particularly easy movie to produce. The screenplay went through numerous revisions by four screenwriters, including some uncredited rewrites by "Minority Report's" Scott Frank, who crafted a reshoot aimed at clarifying McAffrey's relationship with Collins' wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn).
Most important, "State of Play" wasn't always going to star Crowe. Brad Pitt was originally cast in the lead role, but the actor told Universal he wasn't happy with the script.
The studio was ready to proceed anyway and hired Crowe as a last-minute replacement. Director Macdonald says he was surprised at the actor's unkempt, chubby appearance -- "It wasn't exactly what myself and the studio imagined," he said in a recent interview -- but the look did fit the part; newsrooms are often filled with out-of-shape characters drawn more to Fritos than free weights.
(Crowe says he was working off the weight he gained for "Body of Lies," which wrapped a few weeks before "State of Play" started.)
But is that the Crowe moviegoers want to see? George Clooney packed on the pounds for "Syriana" and won the supporting actor Oscar. Robert De Niro did the same for "Raging Bull," winning the best actor statuette.
Rival marketing executives note that in some of Crowe's most successful dramas -- "Gladiator," "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," "3:10 to Yuma" among them -- the actor looked more buff than beefy, a formidable man of action.
In "State of Play," on the other hand, Crowe looks and behaves more like one of us -- not a movie star. In one key scene shown in the "State of Play's" advertisements, Crowe's character runs from the bad guy, rather than taking him down.
Had the movie featured Pitt, some rival marketers say, its prospects might look brighter. (Crowe's last hit was 2007's "American Gangster," playing opposite Denzel Washington in a crime drama that sold tons of tickets to young men.)
It doesn't help, these competing executives add, that "State of Play" can't easily be summed up in a 30-second TV spot. Consequently, audience-tracking surveys show "State of Play's" unaided awareness -- a key measure of a film's potential box-office success -- is barely detectable.
Adam Fogelson, Universal's marketing and distribution chief, acknowledges that "State of Play" faces an uphill fight. But he is confident the film will appeal to older patrons and be embraced by critics.
"It's definitely a movie for grown-ups," Fogelson says. "I think it's a really entertaining and well-made adult thriller -- a genre that over the years has delivered great box office but has been admittedly challenged in recent years."
Langley knows that moviegoers have been gravitating toward "familiar, comforting, nostalgic, easy and branded-entertainment" movies recently, films that include Universal's hit "Fast & Furious."
That only magnifies "State of Play's" obstacles.
"I am very proud of the movie, and I love Russell's performance," she says. "I don't think people are turned off by Russell Crowe."
Universal certainly isn't. The studio just commenced production on "Nottingham," a big-budget summer 2010 spectacle set in Sherwood Forest. And who's playing Robin Hood? A slimmed-down Crowe.
The great masculine movie stars don't have to get showy to impose their strength. They can afford to understate it — to let it speak for itself. Clark Gable had his twinkle of sexy mischief, Clint Eastwood has his no-frills squint and rasp, and Russell Crowe has a way of lowering his head and raising an eyebrow with a bemused simmer at anyone who dares to cross him, as if to say, ''Do you really think you're going to get away with that?''
In State of Play, the excitingly twisty and topical new politics-and-media conspiracy thriller, Crowe's Cal McAffrey, a veteran reporter for the Washington Globe, is the sort of jaded, slovenly, all-work-and-no-life civic gumshoe who generally spends a lot of time — at least in movies — mouthing off to his superiors, making a big, blustery show of what a battered knight of the newsroom he is. Crowe plays this standard role not by throwing tantrums but by lowering his voice to a mellow, courtly purr. With his face soft and round, and swathed in a beard and scruffy long hair, the actor may not look in the best of shape, but he uses that bloat merrily, as a way to fake us out. When he squares off with a colleague on the paper, a chirpy blogger (Rachel McAdams) who believes that getting the gossip ''angle'' on the news is the same thing as reporting it, you feel the sting of his warrior's contempt, and also the righteous joy he takes in being the guardian of something larger than himself.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), from a screenplay by Tony Gilroy, Matthew Michael Carnahan, and Billy Ray that shrewdly compresses and Americanizes the superb 2003 BBC dramatic series, State of Play spins a thorny tale of political corruption laced with personal sleaze. A young woman, killed when she fell under a Washington, D.C., subway, turns out to be the research aide of Stephen Collins, a congressman played by Ben Affleck with just the right touch of furrowed-brow cardboard nobility. He announces the tragedy at the start of a hearing on the nation's use of private defense contractors. As he weeps with ''sincere'' dismay, we look at Affleck and think: What's he covering up?
He's hiding the fact that he was having an extramarital fling with the victim. Their affair provokes a white-hot media frenzy, but McAffrey, who happens to be old buddies with the congressman, senses that there's more to the story. Tangling with his editor, who has grown desperate in the age of dying newspapers (she's played by Helen Mirren, snappish as a piranha), he navigates the adultery scandal by uncovering what the tabloid smoke has shrouded.
Conspiracies are supposed to hit us with the shock of revelation. But when it's revealed, early on, that PointCorp, the film's fictional version of the Blackwater mercenary group, is planting its profiteering tentacles everywhere, we may think we've figured out most of the puzzle. We haven't. State of Play has enough layers of insidious surprise, as well as tasty characters like an unctuous PR guru played with high theatrical ''decadence'' by Jason Bateman, to keep even a seasoned political-corruption buff guessing. To get to the bottom of things, McAffrey has to use all of his low cunning, his man-of-the-people contacts (security guards, morgue attendants), and a diabolical gambit involving a videotaped interview employed as bait. What gives his investigation a gripping urgency is that it demonstrates, through the ingenuity and zeal of his every move, how vital the old-fashioned, step-by-step process of hardcore newspaper reporting really is.
The issue of newspapers fighting to stay alive in the Internet era exerts a particularly topical zing in State of Play. It's one of the first journalistic dramas to take up this theme, which arises out of the bickering partnership between Crowe and McAdams (perfectly cast as an ambitious wonkette). More than that, though, the movie's plea for the investigatory relevance of its hero's profession begins, after a while, to blur into the issue of the film's own relevance. If a thriller with the verve, fire, and — yes — the timely substance of State of Play can't catch on, then movies for grown-ups may well prove to be as endangered as newspapers. A–
Posts: 27184 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Cant wait to see this! Granted I'll see anything with the amazing Robin Wright Penn and Helen Mirren. In fact I'm going to a screening tonight and will give a review after...
Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009 State of Play: Better on the Small Screen By Richard Corliss
I settled in for a screening of the year's first big prestige picture: State of Play, a political thriller starring Oscar laureate Russell Crowe as a crusading newsman and Ben Affleck as a prominent Congressman whose career is threatened by a sex-and-murder scandal. This is my kind of cinema sirloin, organic and artfully prepared. Yet something in me anticipated leftovers. The film is a distillation of a 2003 BBC miniseries, also called State of Play; and I'd recently seen and revered that show. Not that the American movie couldn't have improved on the British series. It's just that, lately, a decent film has trouble matching the best TV.
We happen to be in a not-so-hit period for movies, and an excellent one for long-form TV drama. Shows like Mad Men and Big Love in America, and Sex Traffic and Little Dorrit in Britain, are deft where feature films, even the highly hyped Oscar contenders, can be coarse — one a whispered revelation, the other a shock-therapy harangue. For a handy compare-and-contrast, check out the small- and big-screen versions of State of Play. You'll see the difference between a vital work of popular art and a patched-up retread. It's almost enough to make a movie critic wish he could watch television — good television — for a living. (See TIME's top 10 TV series of 2008)
We meet Cal McAffrey (Crowe), star reporter and resident curmudgeon of the Washington Globe, as he's pursuing what seems to be the all-too-routine murder of a drug dealer. Another Globe staffer, perky bloggista Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), is digging for sexual dirt attending the relationship of a Capitol Hill researcher, dead in a train accident, to her boss, Congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck). Cal muscles in on Della's story because in college he was close to the budding politician — and even closer to Stephen's wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn). As Cal and Della form an uneasy alliance, they begin trying to weave a coherent pattern out of dozens of threads: Stephen's affair with the dead woman; his estrangement from his wife; his chairing of a subcommittee that could issue an explosive report to cripple a powerful industry; the conniving of party bosses and lobbyists to suppress or manipulate the truth ... whatever that might be.
This is straight from Paul Abbott's BBC script for the BBC series, which has a beautiful narrative shape, gradually expanding from the two murders to a wider conspiracy, then narrowing to reveal the killer. The movie is seriously compressed, as a 2-hour film must be from a 5-hour 41-minute TV show, but not fatally crippled. It reduces the number of reporters on the story from five to two, as well as ditching the subplot of a tryst Cal has with Anne. In the TV series Cal has two houseguests. Stephen and then Anne; it seems just the tiniest bit compromising for a reporter to house the subject of his story, then bed the man's wife. But Cal, even on threat of being fired, can't renounce his new love. (The urgent voice of the viewer, by about the fourth hour: Dump her!) The movie has only Stephen visit Cal's place, and no affair with Anne. (See Richard Corliss's "Top 10 Jesus Films")
While ironing out the original story, the movie adds a wrinkle that will impress many a reviewer with its poignancy. Here the main reporters are career antagonists representing two generations, indeed two species, of daily journalism: he an ink-stained kvetch of the print era, she an online blogger looking for the gossip angle. They might be Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell from the classic newspaper comedy His Girl Friday, except the tension is all professional, nothing romantic. (No time for lovey-dovery; must keep main story moving.) But it is perfectly symbiotic; the two use their complementary skills of wheedling, flirting, threatening to find out who done it and why. Newspaper fans and employees will be pleased to know that in the film, as in the series, all the reporters are smart, indefatigable and — if you allow for Cal's friendship with Stephen — scrupulously honest. Aren't we terrific?
Slovenly, with long, stringy hair, and weirdly resembling the adult film star Ron Jeremy, Crowe disappears rather ostentatiously into the role; he's like a hedgehog trying to hide behind a Ping Pong ball. Affleck puts his stiff affability to handsome use, and McAdams reads all her lines correctly. The showy role — of a public-relations creep named Dominic Foy, a friend of the murdered woman and a pusher of questionable corporate agendas — goes to Jason Bateman. He's most entertaining, in a squirm-inducing way, but lacks the preening, queening elan of Mark Warren, the BBC's Dominic.
The movie's script is credited to three heavyweights, all veterans of political suspense film: Matthew Michael Carnahan, who wrote The Kingdom (G-men in a middle East war) and Lions for Lambs (handwringing over Afghanistan); Tony Gilroy, of Michael Clayton and Bourne movie fame; and Billy Ray, who did the magazine-corruption film Shattered Glass and the CIA exposé Breach. When a trio of top names is on a script, you can guess that each worked consecutively on the material, trying to slim it down or punch it up; and that each was employed to fix the "improvements" the previous man had made. It's been reported that Brad Pitt had been signed to play Cal, but departed the project after difficulties with the script. Pitt was right: none of the writers had solved the adaptation.
Turns out that Abbott's story hadn't been stretched to fill six hours, it was designed that way, with climaxes or cliffhangers at the end of each episode. The script inhabits a large structure that allows breathing room for the characters and situations; the movie tries to keep up with the story, but huffs and puffs like an out-of-shape runner trying to turn a marathon into a sprint. It's got most of the original's text but not its texture. The TV show's director, David Yates, sometimes erred on the side of camerabatics, but he lent the enterprise pace and flair, and assured that each of the story's 20 or so major characters had a life of his or her own. (From State of Play Yates graduated to the Harry Potter franchise; he will have directed four of the final eight Potters.) The film's director, Kevin Macdonald, who did The Last King of Scotland, is not a flair fellow. The chase scenes interpolated into this version have no special oomph; the encounters no residual kick. Paging Ridley Scott? Oh, sorry, too late.
So there it is: another film that can't compete with a TV show. But I'm not turning in my movie-critic's license quite yet. If there's one thing I learned from both versions of State of Play, it's that a journalist never gives up.
Video review: 'State of Play' Politics and investigative journalism usually make for an intriguing mix. But not here. By BETSY SHARKEY Film Critic
April 17, 2009
There is a rich tradition in film of taking a political thriller and putting it squarely in the cross hairs of an investigative journalist -- think "All the President's Men," "The Killing Fields" and "The Year of Living Dangerously." "State of Play" definitely wants to join that crowd, and with a cast headed by Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Helen Mirren, you'd expect all the stars to align.
Yet instead of another classic, what director Kevin Macdonald has given us is a meandering movie that sometimes hits dead center and sometimes misfires dismally, resulting in a drama more tangled than taut.
There are all sorts of reasons why this particular intersection is such an intriguing one to filmmakers: the stakes are always high, whether it's lives or a country's future on the line; the DNA of investigative journalists is not unlike a Michael Vick pit bull -- they are programmed to go for the kill; nothing is ever quite as it seems, which, with luck, keeps us guessing until the final denouement; and there is that precious high moral ground that flawed humans are clawing to take.
Inspired (and, if you've seen it, overshadowed) by the exceedingly fine 2003 BBC miniseries, the film is set in Washington in what feels like the later days of the Bush administration when disillusionment was running high and a fresh-faced congressman with a fistful of integrity could make a mark. Two seemingly unrelated murders jump-start the action, at least one coming with a juicy, and familiar, Beltway back story: beautiful young aide involved with her married boss -- Affleck as Congressman Stephen Collins, whose rapid ascent on the back of a congressional hearing into corporate high jinks just might be derailed now.
Collins' old college roommate, Cal McAffrey (Crowe), is a hard-boiled investigative reporter now with a Washington Post-styled newspaper, madly trying to crack the case before the cops or the competition. In short order, it's hard to tell whether Collins is more valuable to McAffrey as his friend or as an extremely well-placed source.
Though there are many players in keeping with Washington's legions of the self-interested, the narrative circles around three -- the beefy and unkempt veteran journalist (does Hollywood create any other kind?), the polished-to-a-high-sheen politico and a newspaper industry, like the politician, fighting for its life.
McAdams comes into the picture as a hyperaggressive new-generation blogger, essentially serving as little more than a tote bag of a collaborator for Crowe rather than a real window into the friction between Web and print; and Mirren gives us a finely executed Kay Graham-styled newspaper editor, whose acerbic tongue and desperation are equally lethal.
As he sometimes has in recent years, Crowe seems not all that interested in his character, who could have used some of the roguish charm he brought to "3:10 to Yuma." Meanwhile Affleck struggles to give texture and depth to his compromised congressman. That presents a real problem for "State of Play," which needs these two characters to feed off of each other to work.
That McAffrey slept with the congressman's wife ( Robin Wright Penn) years ago, which should have cast a shadow on the relationship, results in nothing more than a few throwaway moments with no payoff other than a little screen time for Penn, who wears years of disappointment and resignation well.
When the characters are on the move, the film works, whether it's Crowe's pressuring (and secretly videotaping, which I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to do) a source for information on one of the murders, or Penn at Affleck's side facing down the chorus of humiliating questions from reporters about his infidelity, essentially taking that vow of silence we see all too often in the nation's capital.
The filmmakers know how to mine political and journalistic turf for tension. Macdonald took us inside the treacherous palace of Uganda's Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland." And the extensive screenwriting team includes Matthew Michael Carnahan ("The Kingdom"), Tony Gilroy ( "Michael Clayton"), Billy Ray ("Shattered Glass") and some uncredited revisions by Macdonald friend Peter Morgan ( "Frost/Nixon").
Yet despite all of their experience in those very same trenches, somehow when "State of Play" should be at its stomach-clenching best, the tension simply evaporates.
What the film does well is to remind us that when corporations with billions of dollars at stake come to Washington, someone besides the politicians better be watching. In the world Macdonald has created, a nettlesome press willing to dig through all the numbers, the subterfuge and the garbage literal and otherwise, remains our last best hope -- it's just not as fearsome and passionate a place as it should be.
Tony Scott of the NYTimes really, really wanted to like State of Play, but ends up decidedly mixed at best
The News on Paper, and Other Artifacts
By A. O. SCOTT Published: April 17, 2009
I will admit that I choked up a little at the end of “State of Play.” Not because the story was especially moving — or even, ultimately, all that interesting — but because the iconography of the closing credits tugged at my ink-stained heartstrings. The images are stirring and familiar, though in a few years’ time they may look as quaint as engravings of stagecoaches and steam engines. A breaking, earthshaking story makes its way from computer screen to newsprint. The plates are set, the presses whir, sheaves of freshly printed broadsheet are collated, stacked on pallets and sent out to meet the eyes of the hungry public. Truth has been told, corruption revealed and new oxygen pumped into the civic bloodstream. All that’s missing is a paperboy yelling “extra!” to crowds of commuters in raincoats and fedoras.
Those of us who work in the newspaper business are highly susceptible to the kind of sentimental view of our trade this movie offers, especially when the sentiment masquerades as tough-minded cynicism, which makes us go all dewy and reach for the bottle of rye we keep stashed in the bottom drawer of our battered metal desk. And anyone, in whatever field, who cherishes memories of “All the President’s Men” or “His Girl Friday” will smile when “State of Play,” directed by Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”), now and again hits the sweet spot of the genre.
On the other hand, those who recall the British television mini-series on which this is based, with its unsparing dissection of compromised and arrogant news media, are likely to be a bit dismayed. The narrative has been updated and condensed by a trio of talented screenwriters (Tony Gilroy, Matthew Michael Carnahan and Billy Ray), but what has been lost is less length or context than depth. This “State of Play” is both shallower and muddier than its clear-eyed source.
Russell Crowe, as Cal McAffrey, a scruffy, dogged metro reporter for The Washington Globe, engages in fine snappy banter with Rachel McAdams, whose character has the ultramodern job of political gossip blogger and the ripely old-fashioned name of Della Frye. The two of them are not remotely Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell — nor yet Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman — but there is some fun to be had in watching them lock horns and ultimately join forces in pursuit of the big story.
The near-total absence of sexual tension between them is perhaps a concession to the mores of the modern workplace, but it also allows Cal to be ensnared in a dubious subplot involving Anne Collins (Robin Wright Penn), an old flame who happens to be married to a powerful young congressman who happens to be Cal’s college roommate and best pal. We will get to him in due course — his alleged doings and potential undoing are the motor that drives the movie’s frantic plot, and he is played by Ben Affleck — but let’s linger for another moment in the newsroom, while it lasts.
The battered old Globe has just been taken over by a media conglomerate (a development that only adds to the atmosphere of nostalgia), and the flinty editor (Helen Mirren) harangues her troops to bring in the hot copy that will sell some papers. A series of apparently unconnected events — a double murder in a dark alley; the apparently accidental death of a young congressional staffer; important hearings up on Capitol Hill — bring together Cal and Della, who present an amusing clash of journalistic sensibilities and generational styles.
Cal drives a filthy Saab, works at a desk strewn with papers and books, lives in a cluttered rat hole and takes notes with a pen. Initially he has nothing but contempt for Della, whose insouciant, opinionated approach seems to him to violate every tenet of his noble, ragged craft. She doesn’t even seem to own a pen! Della, naturally, regards Cal as a slow-moving, antediluvian creature marked for extinction. Each has so much to learn from the other. What Della learns, charmingly if none too plausibly, is that some stories lie too deep for blogs and can only truly live on the smudgy, crumply page.
The chance to explore the swiftly changing culture of Web-age journalism is one of several intriguing possibilities that “State of Play” squanders as it makes its jumpy, lumpy way toward a disastrous final plot twist. Della and Cal spar over journalistic ethics and habits, but their arguments carry no real dramatic force. And as their investigation proceeds, the movie uncovers some tantalizing themes that are either trampled or kicked aside. What promises to be a smart, sharp inquiry into the complicated intersection of private vice and political corruption — a vivid essay on the nature of power and the ambiguous pursuit of truth — turns into a superficially clever, self-important and finally incoherent thriller.
Congressman Stephen Collins (Mr. Affleck, wielding a Philadelphia accent as thick and inauthentic as low-fat cream cheese) is digging into the sinister dealings of a mysterious security contractor. When his lead researcher is run over by a train, all kinds of questions begin to pop up on cable television and the blogosphere. Was she sleeping with the congressman? Was her death really an accident? Cal tries to juggle professional duty and the obligations of friendship, and the screenwriters try to manage a blizzard of semitopical allusions while Mr. Crowe and Mr. Affleck allow themselves to be upstaged by top-notch supporting players like Jeff Daniels (as a partisan poobah) and Jason Bateman (as a sleazy D.C. fixer).
Mr. Bateman arrives too late to save “State of Play” from the train wreck of its third act but just in time to interrupt the speechifying with some louche and tasty line readings. And the best parts of the movie are details and atmospherics, which add up to a sense that in small ways, filmmakers come close to getting the story right even if the story itself turns out to be nonsensical.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,
The reviews are mostly mixed to mixed favorable. I posted the same critics I always do (a select few) irrespective of what they say. Stop seeing the world through blinders. When have you ever linked to or copied anything that wasn't favorable to you lust object?
66 at Metacritic is far below what this film needs to have a chance. It is a mediocre ranking for a film with the caliber of talent involved in it.
The other review posted is EW's, which had not Pacinofan done so, I would have.
The reviews here average at about 64 at Metacritic. Their complete list of critics at the moment is 66, without the NY Times review posted yet, which will slightly lower their rating. What has been posted here is not cherry-picking, but a representative and fair sampling of the really major reviews.
Unfortunately - and I really mean unfortunately - this film is likely to be a significant flop. There is a lot of strong talent involved with the film (including Crowe, who is mainly getting good reviews, although not as good as Jason Bateman). It is meant to attract an older, intelligent audience, but likely will not. It is likely to gross under $10 million for the weekend, be off screens in three weeks at most, and disappear. And it will be, if so, another nail in the coffin in this sort of movie for theatrical release, just a Duplicity's failure was (though the latter likely ends up a bit higher).
They're all going to cable and other media soon, folks, at least except for a small window at the end of the year. The film world as we've known it is changing forever.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,
Of course I know that films like 17 Again and Crank are going to come out on top because todays tickets buyers are as Leno puts it "Jay-Walkers". Ask them what year did we get into WW2 and they answer 1492. But Crowe has added another strong character to the many of his career. I can see AFI reviewing them when he is finally honored.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mikead,
Posts: 1913 | Location: Pennsylvania USA | Registered: July 24, 2002
Originally posted by Mikead: Of course I know that films like 17 Again and Crank are going to come out on top because todays tickets buyers are as Leno puts it "Jay-Walkers". Ask them what year did we get into WW2 and they answer 1492. But Crowe has added another strong character to the many of his career. I can see AFI reviewing them when he is finally honored.
Well I have a Masters Degree and graduated Summa Cum Laude from college and grad school and am still choosing Zac over Russel Crowe. Zac is so cute and fun (that's right I have a little crush- you all know I love musicals- I was even able to make it all the way through his godawful "Saturday Night Live" episode) while Russel Crowe looks like a total douche-hat (it's a cross between an ass-hat and a douche bag- try the word out, I think you'll like it) with his pudgy body, country ham face and long hair in "State of Play". Actually he looks like a roadie... and wouldn't even rank amongst the better looking roadies. It may be shallow but I am fine waiting to see Crowe's flick on DVD while I want to see Zac Efron's pretty face, and even prettier eyes, on the big screen.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: pacinofan,
Posts: 27184 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by Mikead: Of course I know that films like 17 Again and Crank are going to come out on top because todays tickets buyers are as Leno puts it "Jay-Walkers". Ask them what year did we get into WW2 and they answer 1492. But Crowe has added another strong character to the many of his career. I can see AFI reviewing them when he is finally honored.
Well I have a Masters Degree and graduated Summa Cum Laude from college and grad school and am still choosing Zac over Russel Crowe. Zac is so cute and fun (that's right I have a little crush- you all know I love musicals- I was even able to make it all the way through his godawful "Saturday Night Live" episode) while Russel Crowe looks like a total douche-hat (it's a cross between an ass-hat and a douche bag- try the word out, I think you'll like it) with his pudgy body, country ham face and long hair in "State of Play". Actually he looks like a roadie... and wouldn't even rank amongst the better looking roadies. It may be shallow but I am fine waiting to see Crowe's flick on DVD while I want to see Zac Efron's pretty face, and even prettier eyes, on the big screen.
Umm, sorry to disagree with you, so soon after you were sorta nice to me and all, but no, I gotta agree with Mikead...
Truth is, I like men, and ONLY men, so I simply could never go LESBIAN for Zacquisha!
