CityLife

State Of Play

CONDENSING a feted six-hour BBC mini-series into a little over two hours, shifting it wholesale to Washington and then having Russell Crowe taking the lead could, let’s face it, have had disastrous consequences.

But State Of Play is actually an intelligent, very effective thriller in which the real hero could be said to be the sort of print journalism which takes the time and effort to get the right story and the story right.

Crowe (taking over from a mooted Brad Pitt which, one suspects, would have been a quite different film) plays Cal McCaffrey (the John Simm part).

He’s the sort of journalist that only really exists in fiction – scruffy, long-haired, appreciated by all his contacts but not by management, and with a desk that looks like a rubbish skip – and, just when he thinks his paper has been taken over by gossip-obsessed internet kiddywinks, he finds himself in the middle of a huge political story.

Joining the dots between what looks like a drugs deal gone wrong and the slaying of an innocent witness with the apparent suicide of a political researcher working for Senate Representative Stephen Collins (Jeff Daniels) who’s on the verge of uncovering the wrongdoings of a shadowy corporation, called PointCorp, McCaffrey finds himself deeper and deeper in the murk, yelling “stop the presses” at regular intervals as he uncovers yet more dirt.

Actually, he never shouts “stop the presses” at any point, although his long-suffering editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren) seems to be willing to stop printing the Washington Globe for hours on end while he tracks down a new witness.

Instead, he has to “stop the blog” – I know, it’s just not as sexy, is it? – as perky young internet reporter Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) tries to prove that real newsprint newspapers are, like, so yesterday, you know.

Politicos

But once she starts getting shot at a bit and meets a few real policemen and politicos, courtesy of McCaffrey, she starts to realise that he’s not so bad after all and maybe this real news might just catch on.

Of course, everyone is double-crossing or defrauding everyone they’re not actually killing and even upright reporter McCaffrey turns out to have been dallying with his old pal the Senator’s wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn).

If you’re thinking this all sounds like a good old-fashioned thriller, then you’re not far wrong.

It’s also something of a love-letter to old-fashioned newspaper journalism.

Characters might be wearing designer clothes – actually, I don’t think they are – but the “plot” doesn’t simply consist of them talking about them.

Heck, you might even be tempted to say it’s a proper film – and there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?
 

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