I sit corrected: State Of Play doesn't suck. Completely in spite of Ben Affleck, State Of Play was a pretty good flick and I was pleasantly surprised and engrossed in the film. I thought that the interplay between Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams was well done and well-acted, and it didn't degenerate into some bizarre sexual tension or love interest. It may be a little far fetched, what with the press solving the crimes and withholding evidence from the police and not getting arrested for it, but the story moved fast enough that I didn't get bored.
I'm a big fan of DMZ, which is a fiction story about a green reporter being stranded in the demilitarized zone of Manhattan island during another US civil war and suddenly finding himself being forced to decide if he is a journalist first or a friend of the people first. The notion of privatizing Homeland Security has been a target both of DMZ and this season's 24 (with the requisite fears of massive armies of mercenary soldiers being responsible for the security of the country), and State Of Play fits right alongside its brethren in the explorations of the implications of such a scenario. State Of Play handled the corruption in the government with a style reminiscent of Tom Clancy's, and I found myself making correlations with some of the Jack Ryan stories while watching this movie. I'm sure that the lives of the journalists portrayed in the movie are a caricature of the real thing (as they were more detectives than journalists), but that issue was a side issue in the grand scheme of things. Plus, the movie had a lot of star power to back up the roles being portrayed.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am no friend of Ben Affleck - in fact, having that name in the credits is usually a good enough reason for me not to see a film. I don't think the man can act to save his life and I put him in the emotionless one-trick-pony dustbin along with Keanu Reeves and Christian Bale (although Bale is not as much a deterrent to my enjoyment as the other two). That being said, I was mildly impressed with Affleck's performance in this flick and the fact that he actually moved from stoic to grief-stricken in the course of one pivotal scene was a big credit to him. While his acting style was still mostly wooden, it fit for the role he was playing of the do-gooder Senator who wanted to stop corruption and inadvertently became a part of it, and the exchanges between his character and Crowe's were enough to make me feel the sense of conflict that a real life journalist would face when forced to decide between journalism and friendship.
I also liked the cinematography and the direction, and I thought it was an all around good movie to see. Suspenseful, thought-provoking, and for the most part pretty clean. I don't think it is going to be the best movie of the year, but it's definitely a good one and I think that Russell Crowe should be proud of his performance in it. Thus, if you haven't seen it I'd recommend that you do, especially if you like the Woodward & Bernstein era or the reporter-as-cop story. It's good stuff.
