After seeing the average political films Body of Lies, and recently, State of Play, I am convinced that Russell Crowe can make anything watchable. Hey, remember, A Good Year? What about Proof of Life? Okay, maybe not so much on that last one. It had Meg Ryan in it. Who could have saved it?!

This last weekend I went to State of Play and surprised myself at how enthusiastic I became as soon as Crowe appeared in the big screen. I though I had gone to film to see Rachel McAdams in her big screen return since The Family Stone (and no, Married Life and The Lucky Ones do not count). Turns out, I went for the leading man who gained weight and grew out his hair in an outstanding effort to play a snarky reporter. This role has been missing from the big screen for quite some time. Try to think of the last time you saw a great movie about journalism and all that goes into it? Are you still racking your brain? I am.

State of Play is the most recent venture into getting adults back into the theaters. We are inundated with movies aimed for the kiddos, or as I previously wrote about, action movies. While these are valuable and I extol the virtues on them endlessly, I also care about this genre of film. The movie held up its end for the first hour and twenty minutes as I was deeply engrossed in the plot.

Ben Affleck plays Congressman Stephen Collins whose mistress has died. Initially everyone chalks it up to suicide because she “threw” herself in front the metro in the middle of the morning. As more details come out, we learn, of course, that this is not the case. Collins is married and his wife, Robin Wright Penn (unimpressive as ever), goes to Crowe’s Cal McAffrey to comfort her and we learn that previously have had an affair. McAffrey teams up with a newbie reporter to break the story. The plot is intricate and there are seriously too many twists with a domestic security conglomeration on the rise being factored in.

Meanwhile, Rachel McAdams plays internet blogger Della Frye. Her posts focus on politics and its scandals. It doesn’t take us long to figure out that McAffrey does not think highly of her and that his traditional take on journalism is the “right” one. As I said, I went to the movie for McAdams, but was not impressed with her performance like I have been in the past. In her breakout years (2004-05) she played a teenager in love, a high school “mean girl”, and a snarky family member with deep-rooted issues. Her performance here is solid, but not great. I wanted more emotion from her, I also wanted to know what was going on inside her head. She was the ingénue on this story and I realize I should be faulting the script and the writers on this one.

I’ll get to the bottom line: this film is worth seeing from the comforts of your living room. Crowe is enigmatic on the screen as he infuses his reporter with wit and sarcasm, and makes him slightly pathetic in the fact that the story is all he lives for: he has nothing else. Affleck again proves that he is of no value on the screen. He never comes alive and reads his lines as if he were still stuck in Kevin Smith’s forgettable Jersey Girl. However, there is good news for Affleck: Gone Baby Gone was fabulous, so stick with directing.

Filed under: silver screen by admin