"State of Play": the scoop on a well-acted story

A busy thriller that moves between the worlds of newspapers and politics, Kevin Macdonald's "State of Play" zips along smoothly. Its situations are familiar ones: an adulterous congressman (Ben Affleck) suspected in a murder investigation, a seasoned reporter determined to get the story (Russell Crowe), a young reporter struggling to be taken seriously (Rachel McAdams), a noble politician's wife who hides her pain (Robin Wright Penn).

Though "State of Play" is based on Paul Abbott's 2003 BBC miniseries, a trio of screenwriters has updated it for 2009: The young reporter is a blogger, and the paper is struggling for survival; in the grubby, flat light of the newsroom, there's a palpable smell of fear.

But this film isn't a grim eulogy for a dying industry (though there's something quite touching in the way Macdonald accompanies the end credits with a long, reverent sequence of a newspaper print run); it's a well-acted story of two men struggling with their consciences. Old-school reporter Cal McAffrey is a longtime friend of the congressman, Stephen Collins, and that friendship gets in the way of the paper's coverage of the story — for a while.

There are moments in "State of Play" when you get the sense that it's whittled down from a more complex story (the BBC version runs six hours). Wright Penn, as the congressman's unhappy wife, turns in a performance of such subtle melancholy you wonder why she didn't get more screen time. The marvelous Helen Mirren, as the newspaper's editor, has essentially a series of walk-ons in which she leaves everybody in flames, telling random people to bugger off or intoning, "Don't throw those dewy cub-reporter eyes at me; it's nauseating." (No, nobody talks like this in my newsroom. Too bad.) And the ending feels frustratingly tidy, as if the film just ran out of time and had to tie up all loose ends.

So it's not a truly great film, but so what — it's certainly more entertaining than most of what passes through the multiplexes, and it's a chance to see Crowe do that shambling smart-guy thing he does so well. There's a faint shade of autopilot in the performance, but it's the character rather than the actor: McCaffrey has reported important stories before, and, with luck, he'll do it again.

Crowe and McAdams develop a nicely bantering chemistry from their first meeting, when she says "I'm a big fan of your work" in a way that's both friendly and utterly condescending. And Affleck has some fine moments playing the smooth guy who's suddenly off script, wondering why nothing makes sense any more.

Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland," "Touching the Void") keeps things moving along through the plot's twists and turns, with some deliberately unpretty camera work and snappy changes of pace. At one point, several characters converge during a children's concert of "Peter and the Wolf" at an elegant theater, with the wolf's eerie harbinger-of-doom theme music under-

scoring the dialogue. Not exactly subtle, but delicious, like much of this film.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com