Review of Kevin Macdonald's State of Play

State of Play Movie Poster

State of Play (2009)

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright (Penn), Helen Mirren

Time: 127 min.

Rating:

Russell Crowe isn’t a very decent person (just ask a certain Soho hotel receptionist), but he really is an incredibly talented actor, perhaps one who doesn’t get the recognition he sometimes deserves. His choice of less-than-stellar movies doesn’t help (could The Insider have been any longer or more tedious?), but when he signed up for State of Play, he picked a great film.

Old-fashioned print reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) begins investigating a murder in Georgetown on the morning when a young congressional aide apparently commits suicide at the Dupont Circle Metro station. This aide just happens to work for Representative Stephen Collins (Affleck), Cal’s friend and ex-college roommate. Back in the newsroom, hip blog reporter Della Frye (McAdams) hits Cal up for some information about a possible affair between the aide and Collins.

Of course, Cal refuses to divulge anything to Della because he resents the opinion-driven Internet blog gossip that pretends to be news, but as he digs deeper into the murder story, Cal realizes the murder and the aide’s suicide are somehow connected to a corporate investigation Collins has been conducting on Capitol Hill. Before long, newspaper editor Cameron Lynne (Mirren) has the print and web reporters teaming up to uncover the larger story.

In the larger context, State of Play is actually a literary movie, or at least as literary as a movie can be, because it is a richly layered film touching on several lofty themes. The first obvious theme is the battle between media—namely, print and the Internet. This theme couldn’t be more relevant as newspapers and magazines are folding (even their online versions are losing readers) while Twitter and FaceBook are surging in popularity.

Interestingly, the movie indirectly acknowledges television as the medium between print and the web, but it never really says anything about video or how it is actually pushing text off the Internet. Perhaps even more ironic, the movie ends with print and the web establishing a mutually respected balance, which will certainly not happen.

Another fascinating theme is the evolution and de-evolution of male friendships and how a woman can affect that friendship. Collins’ wife (Wright Penn) is naturally distraught to discover that her husband has strayed from marital fidelity, but as the film progresses, we discover that she first engaged in marital infidelity, with Cal, years before. This little detail adds subtle tension to the relationships for the three friends.

But the primary theme, which gives the film a name, is the play between journalists and politicians—who uses who and why. Cal hits on Collins for a breaking news story, and Collins hits on Cal to spin the story in his favor. Just as Cal seems to use people only for sources, Collins seems to use people for damage control. The thrill is finding out, and deciding, who is the more despicable user—the journalist or the politician.

Even though State of Play has a literary bent, the film also succeeds as a thriller because it contains some intriguing action scenes and maintains suspense until the final minutes. The action and drama are perfectly balanced, and the drama adds enough tension to the plot that it could almost double as action. The scenes when Collins’ wife visits Cal in his apartment and when editor Lynne threatens to drop the entire story are as intense as the scene when the murderer stalks Cal in a parking lot with a gun.

You might think a tightly woven, literary film packed with suspense is a little too advanced for today’s Hollywood screenwriters, and sadly, you will realize it is because if you stick around to watch the credits, you will see that State of Play is based on a BBC series. If only Hollywood was capable of creating such brilliant cinema, but that’s why we have French and Spanish films—for subtle, artistic, cinematic brilliance. (And that’s my opinion-driven “blog” comment for this Internet movie review.)

But the story wouldn’t be quite as good if it wasn’t for the talented acting captured on film. Helen Mirren is always perfect, whether in a large or small role, and Crowe can be expected to give an impressive performance no matter how lame the script.

Even Affleck does a wonderful job and pulls off one or two incredibly subtle moments, like when his lips flicker during a press conference at the beginning of the movie, but like Crowe, his personal life usually overshadows his occasional fine acting performances. Worth noting is the young, not-so-well-known Rachel McAdams, whose Frye makes a believable transition from hip, naïve newbie to hardened, but dedicated, journalist.

There really isn’t anything bad about State of Play; it’s a solid, contemporary American movie. But it just isn’t brilliant. Perhaps because it doesn’t delve as deeply as it should into its themes or characters—the thematic ending is a little too optimistic and unrealistic, and we never learn anything substantial about Frye. Or perhaps because the action drives the plot a little more than the characters—good literature explores characters and human nature more intensely, even when plot driven.

As the credits roll, the cameras show a newspaper’s final print process—the article leaving the computer, the text getting turned into a printing plate, the paper streaming through the web presses, and the printed edition getting loaded onto a truck and exiting the empty warehouse. These scenes are sadly depressing because they show what could soon become history—the printing of a newspaper.

State of Play won’t save the rapidly dying newspaper industry, but what it says about media and how those in the public sphere constantly play the media to their advantage will always be valid, especially in our celebrity- and Internet-driven culture. That message alone makes this a movie worth watching.