State of Play

“The Truth? You can’t handle the truth.” That’s what Marine Colonel Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson) snarls at Lieutenant Danny Kaffey (Tom Cruise) in “A Few Good Men.” Jessep’s viperous arrogance makes him hateful but, in the end, he is right. The truth is that that he ordered a Code Red, the murder of a sub-par soldier to safeguard his unit’s espirit de corps. It is definitely not something we can handle.

“State of Play” is a perfect storm of similar truths in politics. I went seeking a film with the heft and passion of “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 Hoffman-Redford film chronicling Bernstein and Woodward’s exposure of the Watergate break-ins which eventually led to Richard Nixon’s resignation as president. But what I got was something closer to a top 40 version of same: investigative journalism all dressed up as a mildly quirky, entertaining detective story that just happens to be about political corruption.

The film starts with a pretty young woman throwing herself in front of an on-coming DC Metro train during rush hour. The media pile on to an official police statement that it’s a suicide. But an aging, curmudgeonly ace reporter at the Washington Post, Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe), sniffs foul play. He spends the rest of the film sifting through clues that eventually lead him, quite accidentally, to expose a quasi-military take over of the United States. I’m not sure, given the current state of our nation, why anyone would want to stage a coup and take on all that debt. Especially since they could get all the money, power and influence they could ever want just by gaming the banking system or the electric grid. Who knows, maybe they intended it as a mercy killing.

McAffrey is a Columbo-type character, all rumpled and seemingly out to lunch, who has the occasional Zen moment that pierces the opaque heart of plot darkness. Crowe lumbers through this movie like an amiable circus bear, impervious to the barriers of protocol and intimidation, surprisingly gentle despite his bulk.

He’s an old-fashioned man’s man in the John Wayne tradition, Crowe is. Like the heavyweight champion Jim Braddock he portrayed in Ron Howard’s sappy but affecting “Cinderella Man,” he’s a guy who likes to fight; taking a punch only makes it more interesting. In this film he plays against his type and never actually hits anyone, which is refreshing even as I involuntarily flinch every time he lifts his hand. He’s basically a gladiator without a sword in this film, an honest guy in a dishonest world who has to do dishonest things from time to time to keep the idea of honesty alive for himself and. who knows, Western civilization. This is Bogie’s old haunt, the cleft in the rock where Norman Rockwellesque ideas about community take shelter from Kafkaesque ideas about an arch, godless universe. Crowe pulls this trick off fairly well, notching up the non-violent cop character he played in “American Gangster.” Gotta love his new found plowshares.

Ben Affleck plays a popular US congressman, Stephen Collins, who was having an affair with the woman who was killed by the metro at the beginning of the film. Cal and Stephen are former college roommates and still best buddies. Much of the truth we can’t handle either starts or ends here. The story works despite another embarrassing performance by Ben in his quest to become a serious actor. The guy looks like he just rolled off the assembly line at U.S. Robotics, every facial gesture and movement technically accurate but somehow creepy. It was the same in “Hollywoodland,” where he portrayed George Reeves, early TV’s Superman. Maybe he’s taking his cues from “Barry Lyndon,” Stanley Kubric’s lavish, perverse exercise in taking the motion out of motion pictures.

Of all the Ben Affleck films I’ve seen, I liked him best in ”Good Will Hunting” with alternating doses of wise guy swagger and frightened kid vulnerability. There were odd, welcome little flashes of this guy from Southie in “State,” but I didn’t think they worked for US Congressman. It seemed to me that Ben was over his head, trying too hard to touch bottom.

Helen Mirren plays Cameron Lynne, Cal’s boss at the Washington Post, with the gravitas of the captain of the Titanic. She knows that the Internet and Google will soon sink the Post and most newspapers, and doesn’t quite know how to fight back without lowering the paper’s standards. This was also a truth I did not want to handle.

The Post, after all, was the paper that courageously pursued Richard Nixon and his henchmen through the snares and thickets of Watergate, backing brash, inexperienced young reporters against high-level government officials. Watergate would still just be a swanky address on the Potomac without the Post.

While this film certainly nods in the direction of these Fifth Estate giants, it’s about newshounds, not crusaders for justice. I suppose it’s a sign of the times that our heroes are not outraged, personally or morally, by the high-level crimes they expose. In the end, they are just doing their job: digging up what’s hidden and pantingly plopping it down at our feet. Alas, this strikes me as the most damaging coup of all.