State of Play

For much of its playing time State of Play is a fast-paced, entertaining political thriller about a newspaper’s efforts to cover an explosive story involving a popular young congressman and the death of an aide who was also his lover. It has a good cast led by Russell Crowe as Cal McAffrey, the unkempt, chunky, old-school investigative reporter on the story, and a script that offers plenty of surprises. Crowe carries the show, with help from Helen Mirren as his crusty editor at the Washington Globe, Rachel McAdams as the delightfully named Della Frye, the doe-eyed political blogger who partners with him on the story, and Ben Affleck as Congressman Stephen Collins. The mcguffin in the tale is that McAffrey and Collins were college roommates, and McAffrey once had an affair with Collins’ wife. The congressman is holding hearings on a Blackwater-type company, and there’s reason to believe that the outfit is behind the aide’s death. As the story unfolds and the plot becomes more and more twisted, merely for effect, its pretenses to seriousness begin to appear less and less sincere. Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated PG-13