STATE OF PLAY (2009) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Kevin Macdonald
Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams,
Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jeff Daniels,
Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Josh Mostel
The opening moments of this could come straight from a Sam Fuller movie. A thief on foot races frantically through the grimy night streets of Washington, D.C., drops down into an alley and hides behind some garbage cans. A gunman appears, scans the alley, locates the thief and methodically shoots him, once in the head and once in the chest. A man rides by on a bicycle: a potential witness. The gunman shoots him, too. A small crowd gathers a half-block away, close enough to know that something's going on, but not close enough to make out what it is. The gunman sees them, lifts a metal briefcase from the thief, walks away around a corner and disappears. That incident turns out to be linked to the subway death of a Capitol Hill aide who was having an affair with a crusading congressman whose best (and possibly only) friend is a disheveled newspaper reporter assigned to cover the murder in the alley. And that's just the beginning. A conspiracy thriller based on a BBC miniseries that owes something to both "Three Days of the Condor" and "All the President's Men". It goes off the rails eventually, when Crowe as the reporter tries to shake down a source with an elaborate ploy that just doesn't make much sense. At the same time, not many actors can match Crowe for sheer star power. Even with an unkempt beard, long, straggly hair, a laundry-basket wardrobe and the rounded physique of somebody who's lived a little too long on chili dogs and doughnuts, Crowe commands the screen in a way the blandly photogenic Affleck can only dream about. Sorry, Ben.
