State of Play

State of Play benefits greatly from people not knowing how newspapers really operate. In other words it would really be skidding to a halt if in the middle of being chased by killers and surreptitiously documenting a conspiracy reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) had to pause to do a spellcheck.
Director Kevin McDonald makes award winning documentaries like One Day in September, the docudrama Touching the Void, and there's also the practically unseen My Enemy's Enemy (Klaus Barbie docu). Because of deft direction his fiction films work well but tend to come apart under scrutiny. Last King of Scotland stitched several characters and incidents into one protagonist yet had no trouble seeming credible. Likewise State of Play (based on a six-hour British miniseries) keeps you so wound up in intrigue you overlook basic newspaper film cliches like the editor (Helen Mirren) complaining about low circulation and harping about what the owners want or cub reporter (Rachel McAdams) being groomed by vet reporter Crowe in the particulars of running a sting operation on an interview subject, and especially Crowe being the college friend of Congressman Collins (Ben Affleck) and yet still being allowed by his superiors to do a story on him. It's called conflict of interest and while that conflict is never questioned on websites and small tabloids it would never pass muster on a big city newspaper like The Washington Globe, State of Play's fictional news source.
State of Play exists as a newspaper film and belongs on the shelf with The Paper, --30-, While the City Sleeps, Between the Lines, His Girl Friday, and of course the top dog All the President's Men. (I'm ignoring second tier newsprint genre films like I Love Trouble, et al.) For instance even though it's set in newspaper land (L.A. Times) and has a reporter as the lead character The Soloist isn't a newspaper film. For the end credit roll McDonald offers a mini-documentary on how the paper is printed: the robotic and electronic conversion of date onto giant paper rolls, the presses running, being cut and then bundled for delivery.
A mysterious murder kicks starts McAffrey into an investigation that suggests high level government and military involvement in a scheme to privatize homeland security. The trail leads to a soldier of fortune company and with a stake of hundreds of billions of dollars the death toll starts to mount. McDonald wavers the action from swank soirees to gritty street operations. The acting supports the story with solid performances in the smallest roles (Viola Davis or Josh Mostel) and the medium roles (Jason Bateman, Harry Lennix, Robin Wright Penn) right up to the main supporting cast (McAdams, Affleck, Mirren). Crowe as usual has no problem slipping into a believable character that holds the movie's spine in check. Locations of Washington, D.C. are cleverly integrated into the story.