State of Play

For more than a decade, I have toiled away as a reporter, scribbling away in my notebook, talking to all kinds of people, filling a blank screen with words that turn into a story against tight deadlines. I am a journalist, and as I watched the new movie, State of Play, I looked for the tiny details that rang true in Russell Crowe's Cal McAffrey, the grizzled reporter for the fictional Washington Globe.

And there was much that I recognized in myself -- the disorganized chaos of a desk, the gallows humor of a newsroom and the somewhat gritty work of loosening the lips of sources for information. A little over-the-top for dramatic effect but mostly accurate, except for the constant worry of being shot at.

This is a typical political potboiler done well by Kevin McDonald, who also directed the brilliant The Last King of Scotland. Here we find McAffrey trying to help his former college roommate, Sen. Stephen Collins, who is caught in a scandal after his lead researcher and mistress ends up dead. Collins also happens to be on a committee investigating a Blackwater-like company accused of committing fraud and atrocities in its work in Iraq.

As with most political thrillers, McAffrey stumbles upon a grand wide-ranging conspiracy whose tentacles reach the highest levels of government. Helping McAffrey is young political blogger, Della Frye (played by the always wonderful Rachel McAdams). McAffrey and Frye develop an uneasy working relationship, the just-the-facts veteran reporter versus the gossip-mongering blogger.

And as they work together to find the truth in all this mess, McDonald also finds time to enter into the debate about the on-going crisis in the news industry, a crisis that I am unfortunately all too familiar with. Newspapers are dying, and there's legitimate concern that investigative journalism may be dying with it, as the business model for newspapers crumbles quickly in a sour economy.

Business concerns crop up against the expensive, time-consuming work that goes into producing quality journalism, and we see that very clearly as McAffrey and Frye plug along, sometimes in the face of grave danger.

The twists come fast and furious in this movie, which moves at a rapid pace that hardly ever drags. There are holes, but the performances, particularly from Crowe and the lovely Helen Mirren, as McAffrey's boss, Cameron Lynne, makes you forgive them, for the most part. (Side note: I can't, however, quite forgive the shot of the black woman wearing rollers in the newsroom. Something's just not right about that.)

Like All The President's Men, this movie shows the power of quality journalism to inform us so that we can make better decisions. I shudder to think what our democracy would look like without it.