what's your state of play? yeah, you've got no game.

I'm currently reading Don DeLillo's Players. Written in 1977 and largely taking place on the 79th Floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, it reads like a time capsule of sorts. Being a DeLillo novel, it's no surprise that everyone's paranoid. One character wanders the trading floor on Wall St. consumed with the fear that people are reading his thoughts. There are also terrorists everywhere, of course.
Speaking of the 70s, and getting to what this post is really about, ha, Hollywood in the 70s brought us my favorite sub-genre of film, the paranoia thriller. Think The Parallax View, Marathon Man, and The Stepford Wives. The new film State of Play, based on the highly acclaimed British mini-series, seems to be trying to channel these genre standards. Oh, and because it's centered on journalists pursuing the truth, there are shades of All the President's Men throw in for good measure.
Russell Crowe, or rather a puffy, sweaty fleshball somewhat resembling Russell Crowe, stars as a haggard DC reporter who happens to be besties with a dignified-looking, but totally duplicitous Senator (Ben Affleck). When Affleck's pretty, young aide dies a mysterious, accidental death, Crowe investigates and before you can say "Deep Throat" there's talk of a conspiracy. Crowe and the hip/young/stubborn blogger on staff (Rachel McAdams in some terrible outfits) work together and uncover a potential conspiracy involving a Blackwater-esque private mercenary company. The plot contorts into a messy web, characters say things like "this is a conspiracy to the highest levels", and there are some fairly unconvincing chase scenes (one involving a wheezing Crowe ducking behind cars in an underground parking garage). Basically, it makes The Pelican Brief look like art.
It doesn't help that Affleck, he of the Keanu Reeves school of inexpressive acting, stars as the two-faced Senator at the center of the tangled web. An eyebrow raise or pouty lip does not an emotion convey, Mr. Affleck. Other odd casting decisions abound. A surprisingly off-center Jeff Daniels plays a Cheney-like powerbroker, Jason Bateman bizarrely beams down from another planet (or another movie) as a sleazy PR slack, and Robin Wright Penn has nothing to do with the thinly conceived "scorned political wife" role. Thank goodness Helen Mirren stomps around as Crowe's coarse, broadly-conceived editor. She looks fabulous and curses a blue streak (score).