State of Play

The sharp, award-winning British miniseries of journalism, politics and murder gets moved to Washington, D.C., and transformed into a smartly made American film. Russell Crowe plays the investigative journalist who starts putting the pieces together on seemingly random deaths and finds that they revolve around young, ambitious congressman (Ben Affleck) who just happens to be an old friend who is now making waves with investigations into war profiteering. The plot is the same but the culture of old style newspaper reporting butting up against the new culture of Internet journalism and the bottom line of shrinking profits and corporate demands makes for a lively and very current backdrop. Crowe basically stands in for the clash, a 20th century reporter in a 21st century newsroom, and Rachel McAdams stands in for the enemy, a political blogger who wants nothing more than to be taken seriously as a reporter. Jason Bateman stands out in a terrific cast, which also includes Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn and Jeff Daniels, as a sleazy customer who does dirty work for the lobbyists and corporations under scrutiny. Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland") directs this thriller for grown-ups.

"The Making of State of Play" is a better than average featurette with some interesting production insights between the self-congratulatory interviews, and there are a couple of deleted scenes. No commentary, but exclusive to Blu-ray is a picture-in-picture audio-video track. While I like the idea of a series of featurettes and interviews cued to the narrative, it only works when it plays throughout the film. This one is fine when it's on (a walking tour of the newsroom set, actors discussing their characters as they appear on-screen) but it goes into hibernation for long periods of time, which gets frustrating -- on or off, pick one. There's also an interactive guide to locations.