Three out of four stars (Rated PG-13 for some violence, language including sexual references, and brief drug content) Running time: 127 minutes. Reviewed at The Woodlands Tinseltown 17 on April 17.
Newspapers and I go back a long time. Dating back to grammar school I’ve been reading a daily newspaper, impatiently waiting every morning at 5 o’clock for the paper to hit the driveway.
Yet when I poll my students as to whether they read a newspaper, typically only a few hands go up. Several students routinely sit in class checking their BlackBerry, while others catch the news online later on in the day or they don’t follow the news much at all.
That in a nutshell explains the current dismal state of the newspaper industry. Several dailies have gone under recently and now even our local daily combines the business section with city and state news on certain days. Advertising revenue has dropped dramatically, partly because of the recession but in larger part due to competition with the online Craig’s List.
Going back to “The Front Page” in 1931, the magic of newspapering has been well represented on the silver screen. “Citizen Kane” was Orson Welles’ thumb to the eye of media mogul William Randolph Hearst, while Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell played married reporters for laughs in “His Girl Friday.” Oscar-winner “All the President’s Men” still serves as the gold standard of cinematic excellence portraying Woodward and Bernstein’s expose of the Watergate scandal.
Now there is the new political thriller “State of Play,” which reminds me a lot of “The Parallax View.” Based on a recent BBC mini-series, scruffy Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) covers the nighttime murder of two people in the Georgetown section of Washington D.C.
Then a train hits a congressional staffer—suicide is offered as the likely cause—except she was the lead researcher on Congressman Stephen Collins’ (Ben Affleck) special committee investigating an unscrupulous security contractor with dealings in Iraq (think Blackwater).
And wouldn’t you know it—Collins and McAffrey were college buddies, McAffrey still has a thing for Collins’ babe wife Anne (Robin Wright Penn), and Collins was having an extramarital affair with the now deceased staffer. Immediately both cable television and the blogosphere jump into action.
Collins is a presidential aspirant, so an alleged dalliance with a staffer is fodder for the ratings. Chris Matthews weighs in with his nonstop motor mouth, and even Lou Dobbs pauses from his usual rants at illegal immigration and factory closings to give his two cents worth.
But let’s not forget those stodgy newspapers—the Globe has been acquired by a conglomerate and the prickly editor (Helen Mirren) wants to boost daily circulation. She orders both Cal and the young upstart blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) to get the scoop.
The plot has more twists than a soft pretzel. But the heart of the story revolves around this unlikely merger of the past—Cal drives a 1990 Saab, wears clothes that would be refused by the Salvation Army, keeps a bottle of whiskey in his desk drawer, and combs his hair like Shemp Howard—with the present, represented by Della and her forever-blogging ways.
Though the story is outlandish, it’s Crowe’s terrific performance that carries the movie. While his accent sometimes wavers between the South Bronx and South Australia, the Oscar winner is compelling to watch on screen and his off-beat character as multilayered as the Sunday edition.
