Sometimes you get the impression that the writers of thrillers like State Of Play are trying to one-up a buddy writing a movie of the same genre. It's as if the template for such movies is the more crazy plot twists, the better. The problem with this, of course, is that we first worry about plausibility and then forget about it because towards the end, the sheer coherence of the film is at stake.

State Of Play is a smarter thriller than that. It stars Russell Crowe as superstar reporter Cal McAffrey of a paper called the Washington Globe. McAffrey is part of an ending era, that of when actual newspapers weren't threatened by the internet. He firmly believes in the value of true, old school investigative journalists and despises many aspects of internet journalism. This leads to a rocky first conversation with one of the globe's bloggers, played by Rachel McAdams.

McAffrey is forced by his editor (Hellen Mirren) to team up with McAdams' Della Frye when a story that initially looks like a political sex scandal breaks out. A young woman commits apparent suicide in the subway. But was it suicide? And why would this happen? It turns out the young woman was a researcher for a committee led by Rep. Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) into the affairs of a company called PointCorp., the movie's main villain. Because make no mistake about it, this is a political movie as well. It deals with the prospect of the privatisation of homeland security in the United States, and it's a not-so-subtle slap at Blackwater and its involvement in the U.S.' affairs in Irak. In any case, Collins cannot hold it together when he is informed of the young woman's death and confesses to having an affair with her.

Collins is Cal's friend and so McAffrey involves himself to a point where Mirren becomes concerned he might be in a conflict of interest. There is also the fact that he had an affair with Collins' wife (Robin Wright Penn) in college. The inexperienced Frye gets more than she bargained for when the investigation turns into a battle for their lives. This is true to a superior extent for McAffrey, but the cute, plucky blogger wasn't prepared for such action.

In a way, State of Play features a few clichés from journalism movies. One of them is that Russell Crowe is one these journalists who's so battled-tested, so brilliant and so apparently trustworthy that he seems to know everyone, and by that I mean everyone from police departments to fellow journalists who work for other publications. This is also the journalism equivalent of the buddy cop movie, where two radically different people are forced to work together so that we can see scenes of tension between them as they argue over how to approach a problem, or in this case, a story. It is almost like a siblings' rivalry in which each thinks he is the older brother. But in this case, it works because both characters are likable and we believe them in their respective parts.

This movie also does follow many conventions of thrillers such as these. We have the obligatory near-death scene, which in this movie's case, takes place in a parking lot between McAffrey and a mysterious hitman (Michael Berresse). You might be puzzled by the tortured logic Berresse's character uses to justify acting the way he does.

This movie needs a hitman like Berresse's because we are, of course, speaking here of a company that is engaged in a conspiracy so vast and so complex it involves hundreds of people from private companies to government officials, yet one lonely politician, an investigative reporter and a blogger threaten to bring it down. The ending is also far too perfect as anything remotely similar to such a series of events in real life could not possibly end well.

I read somewhere that Crowe got the part of McAffrey after it didn't work out with Brad Pitt. The producers should be glad it turned out this way. Pitt would certainly have made McAffrey look slicker, but even though Crowe is on cruise control here, it takes an actor of his presence to make this part convincing. McAdams gives a very well-calibrated performance as she avoids the trap of making her character's inexperience into clichéd incompetence. Mirren, as the wonderful actress that she is, is extremely convincing as the editor, although it is rather contradictory that her character talks about how the paper's new money-hungry owners went it to strive for immediacy and then, late in the film, tells Crowe something along the lines of "Well, finish the story already! We've been holding the presses for four hours!"

I've spent a few paragraphs complaining about the picture, yet I'm recommending it on top of saying that I liked it. Perhaps my standards have been lowered by several supremely inferior bits of garbage that aspire to being a film like this. I am well aware of the possibility. The strong performances from the actors helped a great deal, but that's not all. There are a lot of clichés and the ending is a little too easy and perfect, but the fact that State of Play nearly reached plausibility was good enough for me.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older