Movie Review: State of Play

It's hard to believe this is right, but I have only one noncommercial movie to announce over the next few days, the usual French movie at the Blank Page Gallery. But that one is a doozey, Forbidden Games, directed by Rene Clement in 1952, drew raves even from the notoriously crank John Simon, who called it a "masterwork as fine as any I know," an almost perfect mixing of "war and its brutalities; the comic brutishness of the peasants, two feuding families who conduct a parody of war; and the children?s elegiac morbidity that is yet a kind of loving."

If that sounds confusing, it's not; it's complex. Dangerous Games shows Tuesday at 7:30 in the Blank Page Gallery, 917 W. Douglas.

And commercially, we have a superior political-journalistic thriller akin to All the President's Men in State of Play, starring Russell Crow, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Helen Mirren.

State of Play is about a tangle of human, financial, and political relationships that get involved in the investigation of what may be the murder of a young woman who falls in front of a subway train, and complicated as relations get, State of Play never gets just bewildering and as a matter of fact clarifies steadily as the investigation goes along; the newly arising elements deepen and widen the situation in quite believable ways, if you grant some of the conventions of the old-fashioned intrigue plot, such as that everything develops around a fairly simple central situation and all the major characters are coincidentally interlinked. Without those conventions, you can hardly have a real mystery story, and this is a real mystery story.

Helen Mirren is the character least deeply involved, but she's the newspaper editor and carries not only the essential role as the one who orders the investigation but also a lot of the subtheme of the dying newspaper and the question of journalistic integrity vs. tabloid sales methods; her role, like the others, is a development of a standard character, the hardboiled but basically idealistic editor under pressure; but Mirren makes it real. So does Crowe. His could-be stock role as a sloppy looking ace reporter with no great respect for the rules but a drive for the truth; he looks like an alcoholic but apparently isn't one; he has a mistress but doesn't seem to be a womanizer; and he's not much for violence and not particularly given to cynical wit. Rachel McAdams might be expected to embarrass herself in this kind of acting company, but never fear: her part as the new but ambitious ingénue is a perfect fit for her and not written down.

Ben Affleck's congressman is so handled in both script and performance as to leave us suitably unclear just how dishonest he may be, personally and politically. And Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, and others contribute their bits efficiently and effectively. You will recognize Halliburton and Blackwater among other current news entities, but resemblances aren't pushed; director Kevin MacDonald and his trio of writers are satisfied that the principles involved are clear, without closer references.

State of Play is condensed from a much longer British mini-series, and you might feel that there is a bit more story than two hours can develop. But I found it refreshing to see a mystery thriller that didn't try to be more than it could be, and that was mysterious while making coherent sense. That's an old-fashioned concept, and I'm glad to see that it isn't yet entirely dead.