Washington Confidential

I loved State of Play.

As a journalist – mmm, let me just call myself a writer.

As a writer who went to journalism school (I think that’s better, for I don’t write that many truth-uncovering pieces for my real job), I know the difference between what’s right and wrong in the fine art of storytelling.

There is an important line a journalist – mmm….

There is an important line a serious writer mustn’t cross in order to be fair to the story and its subjects, and in State of Play, Russell Crowe’s seasoned investigative reporter goes – to borrow a quote from Friends’ Joey – so far past the line, he can’t even see the line.

The line is a dot to him.

And that’s one of the things that I found so intriguing about the film: how it shone a light on the craft of journalism, while at the same time, offered commentary on the current sad state of affairs the newspaper world is facing in what I call the Age of Opinion (best exemplified by all the blogs out there that don’t so much as report but spew).

As Cal McCaffrey, a Washington Globe scribe, Crowe leads an all-star cast that includes Rachel McAdams (one of the finest actresses of her generation), Helen Mirren, and a never-more-beautiful Robin Wright Penn, in a blistering thriller about rising U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (a steely and fine Ben Affleck), who is embroiled in a case of seemingly unrelated, brutal murders.

That line I was talking about earlier: When you’re a journalist, you can’t be friends with your story subjects. Cal and Congressman Collins were college roommates. That complicates things, you see.

Collins comes to ask Cal for help after his research assistant/mistress is offed. His secrets exposed, Collins needs help controlling the flow of information, but Cal has a job to do.

After all, like a doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath, he has vowed to do no lie.

Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) did a tremendous job bringing to the big screen the six-hour BBC miniseries upon which State of Play is based, thanks in part by the taut, edge-of-seat pace of the screenplay written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom), Tony Gilroy (the Bourne series, Michael Clayton), and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass).

This is, perhaps, one of my favorite movies of the year. It’s topical, twisty, and quite entertaining.

My Rating ****

Photo: Universal Pictures.