Rating:
* * *
Verdict:
Fitfully engaging political thriller wastes good source material.
A reporter, unburdened by notes, produces, on deadline, a story (supplying his own really bad headline, "Congressman Arrested") which, though it shakes the very foundations of the Washington establishment, goes straight to print without being read by the editor, much less a sub-editor. Talk about verisimilitude. I have never heard a journalist in a newsroom utter the phrase "human-interest story"; but one does in this film.
Anyone who saw the taut and brilliant BBC six-parter - a wonderful blend of intricate political conspiracy and headlong sweaty-palmed drama - would know that a big-screen remake was both inevitable and futile. And so it has proven.
It's not that it's a bad film - though a team of excellent writers, including Tony Gilroy (Michael Collins) and Billy Ray (the excellent
Breach
) seem to have subtracted more value than they've added. Director Macdonald (
The Last King of Scotland
) knows how to crank up the atmosphere, but for a two-hour film it is narratively overfed, and incoherent as a result.
Worse, it drops the best thing about the original, which was an astringent and intelligent meditation on the complicated, compromised relationship between the press and power, not least the police. In its place, we have Russell Crowe fretting for about nine nanoseconds because he still has the hots for an old mate's missus.
Crowe plays Cal McCaffrey, the dishevelled star reporter of the Washington Globe who's trying to join the dots between three events: the killing of a street kid; the "suicide" of an aide who was having an affair with her congressman boss (Affleck); and that congressman's campaign to unmask dirty dealings in the letting of a private military contract to the Halliburton-type PointCorp.
McCaffrey's characterisation is pure cliche - his beat-up Saab is full of fast-food wrappers and his desk's a mess - but the script ups the ante by improbably teaming him up with the paper's barely grown-up gossip columnist (McAdams), who works strictly for the online side. They get on like a cat and a dog and you just know they are going to respect each other by the end.
McCaffrey is actually one of Crowe's more engaging characters in a while, just fragile enough to be likeable. But the film never rises above run-of-the-mill and Helen Mirren as the
Globe'
s editor almost visibly cringes as she delivers lines of paralysing banality.
The film may end up being the last studio movie with a print journalist as a hero. It may also be the first with a blogger protagonist. Now that's progress.
Peter Calder
Cast:
Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, Helen Mirren
Director:
Kevin Macdonald
Running time:
118 mins
Rating:
M (violence and offensive language)