Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2009 7:59 pm 
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RUSSELL CROWE AND BEN AFFLECK IN THE AMERICAN VERSION OF STATE OF PLAY

Stop the presses!

With State of Play, the Scottish director Kevin Macdonald (of The Last King of Scotland), who has documentary roots (Touching the Void), has made a powerful American political thriller out of the excellent 6-hour British miniseries of the same name. A young woman falls under a DC subway train and dies. It seemed like suicide, but evidence reveals she might have been pushed. She was working for a congressman in an investigation (in the BBC version, it was about energy companies; here it's Blackwater-style corporate mercenary dispensers). A seedy character also dies that day. His death is linked to the woman's, and she turns out to have been in an affair with the congressman. (Not only that; she was a kind of mole for the mercenary firm. But that emerges later.) In disarray, he turns up at the doorstep of a seasoned newspaper reporter who's an old friend from college. The newspaperman is torn between protecting his pal and unearthing the hot story. He remains loyal, but in this time of print journalism under siege, this is very much a story about the power of the press to unearth information the cops can't get.

This American version of State of Seige is more intense, more serious (there is virtually no humor, while the BBC series was relieved by moments of dry English wit), and, despite being crammed into just over two hours, is more complicated. It puts across several currently newsworthy themes. The BBC miniseries dealt with corporate meddling in politics, murder, and adultery. This time the Blackwater-like firm brings in the hysteria of the "war on terror" and the growing confusion of government service with for-profit capitalism.

Moreover instead of the urbane Bill Nihy, the most famous thespian in the TV piece, the editor is a close-cropped Helen Mirren, whose "Washington Globe" has recently been bought by a media corporation. While Nihy's character was just trying to save money, play by the rules, and still get a great story, Mirren's is rather crudely jealous when the New York Post gets a fluffy but related scandal story that will sell a lot of papers, and there are hints at the offset that the Internet is steadily encroaching, though how we will get hard news with only bloggers at desks and no reporters on the beat remains a mystery.

The Americans have made an intelligent, relevant thriller. The BBC one was good, but not up to the level of Trafik, which benefits from its dynamic interpolation of sequences set in Pakistan, Germany, and England. State of Play in either form is at best claustrophobic. Besides being over-stuffed with plot elements, Maddonald's film is star-studded, beginning with a long-haired, portly, scruffy, and excellent Russell Crowe as Cal McAffrey, the reporter. Crowe seems far more into his role here than he was as the detached CIA boss in the less memorable Body of Lies. He wields his questions, his notepads, and his aged desktop with authority. Ben Affleck is sterling as Stephen Collins, the congressman and old pal. Affleck looks right in a dark suit and has the tough but naive manner of a young politician.

The movie gets a little tangled up with itself with Cal's female sidekick, Della Fryle (Rachel McAdams), also Della, but Smith, in the TV version. This new Della is a coddled blogger for the Web version of the paper, who gets a nice salary and lots of up-to-date gadgets, but has never dirtied her hands with journeyman reportage. Somehow she slips by sheer enthusiasm into being Cal's risk-taking partner, when all she has played with hitherto is gossip and commentary. How is that?

A disappointment is the character Dominic Foy, a PR man both implicated in the recruitment of the murdered Sonia and, unknown to Collins, her friend. Foy's relationship with Sonia is not as well developed here. Moreover Marc Warren, the British Foy, was a wonderfully seedy and flamboyant character. "Arrested Development's" Jason Bateman is a good actor, but his part contributes to this new version's general feeling of being sweatier and shorter on charm or wit.

In the movie, Della and Cal have a platonic flirt, which presumably symbolizes the winning over of blogging by the lure of solid reporting. There was none of that in the BBC series, in which the appealing but lightweight John Simm (as Cal) had a serious sexual affair with Collin's wife Anne (the beautiful and elegant Polly Walker), a plot strain perhaps somewhat over-extended. That was cut out here to make way for mercenary heavies (and to get out in 127 minutes). This high-powered "story,"or "case," as the chief detectives in both versions insist it should be called, has no time now for amorous dalliance or indeed any forays into bedroom or kitchen. What it does have time for is an impassioned declaration by Congressman Collins at the committee hearing about the commercialization of defense. He has found out that "Point Corp" (the Blackwater surrogate) is planning to move wholesale into Homeland Security and make that all for-profit too.

Note that this new shorter version was penned from Paul Abbott's original by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, and Billy Ray, excellent screenwriters and script doctors all, but given Gilroy's tendency revealed in his own Duplicty to over-spin plot, there may have been too many broths brought to a boil here. Still, the status of the press as a Web-endangered species and the commercializing of government service are important themes that aren't at all irrelevant. Macdonald's documentary experience probably helped him get across so much information in so little time without confusing us. It's a pity though that the movie plays exciting new cards onto the table only to let them be swept away at the end when the corporate conspiracy is hastily folded into the prosecution of a single man. Ending with the publication of the news story about that is a kind of cop-out.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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