I have a problem: I have trouble taking Russell Crowe seriously. It’s not because he got in trouble for (allegedly) hitting a staff member at a hotel with a telephone, or because he has a silly rock band, or because he grows long flowing brown locks that I decry as goofy-looking but am secretly insanely jealous of. It’s because of the South Park episode “The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer”; if you’ve never seen it, in it the South Park kids are watching a Russell Crowe TV show where he travels the world, randomly beating the crap out of people and singing a happy tune.
Similarly, I have trouble suspending my sense of disbelief when Ben Affleck tries to act sneaky and/or dramatic. However, this is a step up from earlier in this decade when I flat out despised Ben Affleck; this stems from my ill-fated decision to pay money to see the movie Changing Lanes. I suspect my Affleck melodrama fuse blew sometime later, perhaps during a viewing of Daredevil, but I’m not really sure.
Still, despite a very serious Russell Crowe, and a sneaky/dramatic Ben Affleck, I rather enjoyed State of Play. It’s a solid espionage/crusading journalist/vast government and corporate conspiracy thriller. You may well be asking: is nothing really as it seems? Can no one be trusted? You’d better believe it, sparky.
True, it’s mildly formulaic. Crowe is reporter Cal McAffrey, veteran reporter with not only a nose for news and a heart of gold, but a dogged determination to find the whole, entire, dirty truth, and damn the consequences! Affleck is congressman Stephen Collins, an idealistic young politician determined to make big business accountable and shine a light on their shady practices, and damn the consequences! Helen Mirren is the single-minded editor-in-chief, who needs the story and needs it now, ’cause she’s got to move some newspapers, not find the truth, and damn the consequences! The always cute Rachel McAdams is scrappy young reporter Della Frye, trying to get some respect from the old school types like Crowe who write on their 15 year old computers and still don’t know what a blog is, and she will not be taken off this story, no way no how, and damn the consequences!
Anyway, an evil corporation is in front of congressman Collins’s exploratory committee, trying to get a fat contract for overseas mercenary work. Just as Collins is about to expose them as the liars and crooks they are (hey, they’re a big business in a conspiracy thriller, they have to be evil), his head aide/researcher turns up dead. Through hardboiled journalistic smarts (he’s particularly hardboiled tonight, sort of like Problem Sleuth), McAffrey turns up strong evidence that the evil corporation (their name isn’t really important, but let’s call them Graywater, just for fun) had her killed, and what’s more, rumours of Collins sleeping with his newly-deceased aide spread, much to the chagrin of his wife Anne (Robin Wright Penn), and causing senior congressman George Fergus (Jeff Daniels) to say things like “well, it was a good show, kid, but it’s time to lay low for a while.” It’s obvious that he’s in on the whole thing from the start, of course, because nobody gets a “name” actor (if you can call Jeff Daniels a name anymore) to play such a relatively small part if they’re not. A couple of pleasantly twisty but not really outlandish or completely out of thin air plot twists occur, which I will try not to spoil for those sensitive to such things. Uhm, except for the “Jeff Daniels’s character is in on it” plot twist, I guess. Sorry. Of course, the evil and greed of Graywater goes far deeper and is more widespread than anyone had initially suspected, and they are more than happy to kill people to get what they want. Crowe has a tense scene trying to escape a hired killer in a parking lot, has a big “epiphany” moment at the end where it all falls into place in his mind, and in the end everybody goes out for ice cream together. Yay!
Joking and conspiracy thriller cliches aside, the movie has some fairly nice asides, subplots, and character details that make it better than many such movies. The newspaper Crowe’s character works for is having sales problems (how topical!) and is under new ownership, and MacAdams’s character is not a journalist per se, but one of the paper’s paid bloggers (some bloggers get paid? I gotta talk to the Ricky-in-Chief about that). Jason Bateman has an entertaining turn as a sleazy marketing guy who worked for Graywater and whom Crowe intimidates into telling everything. And the subplot that lurks just beneath the surface is the friendship between Crowe and Affleck’s characters, who were roommates in college, and their mutual love for Penn’s character. Crowe’s integrity is constantly questioned as he feeds Affleck sensitive information before it goes to print, tries to protect his friend’s reputation and generally has trouble maintaining any kind of proper reporter’s distance from what’s going on. At the same time, the things that make him good at his job make him a lousy friend; despite how hard he tries and how much affection he has for these people, genuine human relationships are not his strong point.
Is it depth of characterization that separates a mediocre conspiracy thriller from a very good one? I’d sure say so. Even if, like me, your tolerance for a sneaky/dramatic Ben Affleck and a serious Russell Crowe is pretty low, it’s still more than possible to enjoy this movie. And hey, Daredevil and the guy who hits people with phones are even pretty good in it.
