'State of Play'

Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT) - Congressional sex scandals, nefarious military contractors, political corruption, dying newspapers and mysterious serial murders are entangled in "State of Play," a solidly constructed thriller that recalls the paranoid conspiracies of the 1970s.

The film opens with a rabid chase through rainy Georgetown streets that ends in a double homicide. The cops and Washington Globe crime reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) have scarcely opened their notebooks on that case before an aide (and secret lover) to Rep. Steven Collins (Ben Affleck) falls in front of an onrushing subway train.

Her apparent suicide forces the congressman to publicly confess their affair. He's discredited at the moment he's leading hearings on defense giant PointCorp, which is turning war into a for-profit business. Director Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland") drives the plot swiftly enough to keep you from thinking about its implausibilities.

With nowhere else to turn, Collins turns up on McAffrey's doorstep, and the old college chums begin piecing together a public relations counterattack. But when Cal discovers links between the dead aide and the Georgetown killings, the stakes rise stratospherically high. He's torn between protecting his friend and getting at the truth.

"State of Play" is the kind of yarn newspaper writers love because it's a mash letter to journalism. Crowe's character is a flattering depiction of a certain type of reporter: Lumpy from fast food, rumpled, shrewd, pigheaded about getting to the bottom of things. He's too wised-up to be an idealist, but he resents being lied to and he'll put himself at risk to expose a cover-up.

Crowe has the rare ability to make thinking look interesting onscreen. As Cal sifts through leads, uncovers evidence and connects the dots, Crowe shows you the gears whirling in his head. He has the pinched Bogart smile of a man who's swallowed many bitter truths. He's unstoppably stubborn but no hero. There's a scene in an apartment hallway where he encounters a dangerous guy, and you can feel his throat go dry in panic. He spends the next several minutes in a tense cat-and-mouse game, sensibly trying to hide. It's an admirable stretch for the star of "Gladiator" and "Master and Commander."

His performance is the most inspired item in a film that is mostly methodical. He's almost matched by Jason Bateman as an oily PR man who knows all about the dead aide's checkered past. Bateman makes this cameo character unforgettably icky, funny and surprisingly poignant. He would have made a better costar than the reticent Affleck, whose wooden demeanor suggests what might have happened if John Kerry or Al Gore had gone into acting. It's hard to believe Crowe's character would have taken him on as a friend.

As the procedural elements of the mystery evolve, the film explores the tensions between methodical, detail-oriented old media dinosaurs and the velociraptor sensationalists of the Web and TV. Crowe's bottom-line oriented editor (Helen Mirren) assigns the paper's productive but inexperienced Capitol Hill blogger to be McAffrey's partner on the story to speed things along. Instead, McAffrey teaches the novice the virtues of shoe-leather reporting and meticulous fact-checking. Rachel McAdams does a captivating impression of a skittish doe in the role. Thankfully, Crowe remains her droll mentor rather than a romantic interest.

"State of Play" isn't boring _ there's always something going on _ but you come away puzzled by some of the last-act switcheroos. The film was condensed from a six-hour BBC miniseries; Tony Gilroy ("Michael Clayton," "Duplicity") the master of three-card Monte screenwriting, was among the adapters. The result feels like 100 pounds of story in a 90-pound sack. Still, it's nice to see a film feature one last crusading newspaperman as the hero, before the profession goes the way of the eight-track tape.

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STATE OF PLAY

3 out of 4 stars

Rated R for some violence, language including sexual references, and brief drug content

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© 2009, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)