Release Date: April 17, 2009

(out of 4)

The one role you would never expect Russell Crowe to ever take on in a movie is a journalist. This is in consideration that Crowe doesn’t like journalists, in fact, and has publicly declared he despises them. But it’s really the entertainment journalists he doesn’t like. Crowe takes on the role of Cal McAffrey in "State of Play," a Washington Globe newspaper star reporter engaged in stories in politics, crime and world affairs. McAffrey uncovers a conspiracy in which he also, as it turns out, has personal stakes involved. As with the best Crowe performances the ever-daunting actor never caves in, although the movie does.

When Crowe shows up anywhere in the film – crime scenes, the morgue, his chief editor’s office – Crowe shows up everyone else with his imperious, domineering cool. He cuts through the B.S. of others and shrewdly extracts classified info yet he’s a guy that knows how to tap onto the bottom line. Crowe makes you believe that this is the way it is done. Physically, Crowe has gone shaggy for this role with weathered long hair and scruffy beard. Crowe inside and out respects his role of McAffrey and it is hard, perhaps impossible, to not respect his performance. He is master and commander of Grade-A acting.

“State of Play” is based on an acclaimed 2003 BBC television series and yet the adaptation is Americanized with the right degree of topical relevance. First is a murder of a simple thief and a passerby witness on a bicycle – one of those seemingly isolated events that ties in later. Then, more dramatically vital, a brainy and beautifully enticing young woman is killed instantly after she falls under a subway train which is deemed by police as a potential suicide (that doesn’t make much sense to McAffrey or anyone else in the audience). She was tangled with married congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck, straight-arrowed acting with less than his usual tics) which lights up a sex scandal frenzy. Collins, in the meantime, is a detractor at a hearing of PointCorp, which is a profiteering, shadowy but untouchable industrial-military defense contractor. Collins is told not to raise his voice at the hearings because he is advised it would be professional suicide, especially while his public image is at its most vulnerable.

As luck would have it, Collins was McAffrey’s college dorm roommate and the two of them share the same interests in exposing the malfeasance of PointCorp. McAffrey also summons Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) to assist his investigative reporting, much to the distaste of chief editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren, playing a queen bitch with utmost relish). But while McAffrey is very inclusive of Miss Frye, he’s also telling her constantly how to live up to the hustling requirements of her job. Of course, between the two of them, there is a lot of ground to cover. The arrival by Jason Bateman as a soused PR man for PointCorp. is a highly welcome entrance, hence, the guy who ties up plot’s loose ends by sharing his knowledge of linked explanations.

The movie’s theme is that tabloid gossip drowns out more important current issues, but with equal aplomb a running joke is just as reverent: the idea that newspapers are dying in the age of the Internet. The visual style of the film suggests the rattling urgency of people working around the clock to cling on to their jobs. And the Washington Globe offices are frantic, chaotic and borderline unsanitary. “State of Play” certainly has a feel for how prize-winning but economically distressed newsrooms operate.

I can’t say that the movie on the most part was “fun” but it was doing a good job with being interesting. But anytime you sacrifice realism for sensationalism the credibility of a movie is lost – especially when it comes to the esteemed political thriller genre. The third act is spoiled by too many laborious role reversals which are concocted to generate thrills. But hollow thrills with no authentic grounds are, um, not thrilling. Abandonment of sincerity is deadly for a movie like this, and as a result, its value of relevance disintegrates instantaneously (low point: corporate assassin tells all while placing self in danger.) None of this should be blamed on Crowe who holds himself well in the face of all synthetic twist nonsense.

This is the second film this season to go overboard with twists-and-turns following “Duplicity” but that film at least survived on sex appeal and as a demo on sharp, playful dialogue. “State of Play” dissolves entirely because it’s a serious film that decides it doesn’t care to keep it real and so there is no reason to take it seriously. When it comes to a foul-up like “State of Play” I wonder if Hollywood producers feel so inadequate with their ability to deliver that they demand their writers to keep adding and adding, as if superfluous additions will make their film better. More than often, unnecessary plot piling, severe personality alterations and role reversals just make their films worse. Great Russell Crowe performance, sell-out movie.

Note: Brad Pitt was originally attached to star but dropped out after he disapproved of the script re-writes. Smart move, Brad for sticking to your guns on script quality control.