Review: State of Play

Review: State of Play

Rating: **

Nonna's Rating: $

Rotten Tomatoes: 85%

Obviously, I'm the contrarian on this one. My expectations were high for this film. After all, Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren, Harry Lennix, and Jeff Daniels -- think of the possibilities. And, yes, Ben Affleck delivers a less than stellar performance, but he's not responsible for ruining the movie. The writers are.

It's a newspaper movie -- in the great tradition of All the President's Men , but falling far short of it. Crowe, paunchy and shaggy, plays a dissolute investigative reporter to a "T." Rachel McAdams does a passable job as the young, upstart blogging reporter. Helen Mirren is the crusty -- aren't they all?-- newspaper boss. The subtext of the byzantine plot is the speedy dissolve of the American newspaper as we know it and the rise of the Internet as the preferred source for news. But the film pays scant attention to this issue, resolving it by having Crowe and McAdams overcome their reporting-style prejudices and learning to cooperate to solve the mystery of "what is Ben Affleck up to anyway?"

At least, I guess they solved it. The ending left me with questions -- especially (and this is not a spoiler really) what the heck was that $26,000 about anyway? In a film like this one, ambiguity at the end is problematic; utter confusion is inexcusable. Wait for cable.

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it