The State of Play Kevin Macdonald USA 2009
We watch two men snatch a conversation outside some official looking buildings in Washington DC. The camera conventionally cuts between them as they talk, but then slowly drifts to one side and cuts-away paranoically to what's happening all around, to random people in the street and traffic slowly moving by. Even without the dialogue, the new film State of Play feels like a thriller.
This version of the BBC drama of the same name, directed in the firm incarnation by Kevin Macdonald, relocates the snappy tale of journalistic investigation from London to Washington DC. When Congressman Stephen Collins (played by Ben Affleck) breaks down at a press conference over the news that his lead researcher has died, most people conclude that the couple were having an affair. They were, but Collins' long time friend and journalist Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) smells a bigger story when he links the death to a separate murder case he's covering. Teaming up with his newspaper's blogger, Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), Cal delves unearths a corporate conspiracy of staggering proportions.
Reducing the script from the original six-hour television series to a tense two-hour film the scriptwriters deserve kudos. What starts with a random homeless man being shot in the street convincingly leads to high-level political corruption involving defence contractors who might just be willing to stoop to murder. Driven by the interplay between print veteran Cal and digital newcomer Della (and to a lesser extent their coarse editor played by Helen Mirren), the audience is capably lead through the convoluted plot with more than a few surprises.
Russell Crow's portrayal of the messy reporter Cal sits squarely at the heart of the drama, as he is both chasing the story and linked to Collins personally. A friend from college, Cal had had a fling with Collins' wife back in those days. Unlike in the real world, where he'd be removed from the story, here the big question is whether it will affect his judgement. Unfortunately the casting bails on this point, as Crowe's performance overpowers Affleck's, making it hard to spot any real empathy between the two. Without this the film suffers, dropping from being a great thriller to good one.
Visually the State of Play tries hard to compensate for this, suffusing almost every moment with paranoia. One mystery remains unsolved though. Saving some of the best camerawork for the end credits, the film finishes with a gorgeous depiction of a newspaper going to print. It's a glorious swansong for a dying industry and all because the blogger character, Della, decides to print the story first, the old fashioned way, before publishing it online. Sometimes it seems a thriller can go too far.
