STATE OF PLAY CELEBRATES INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
Released on the weekend before Pulitzer Prizes were announced, State of Play tracks the efforts of investigative reporter Cal McAffrey (played by Russell Crowe) to find corruption in Washington. Shrunk from a six-hour TV miniseries focused on British politics to two hours about American politics, the film ties together unexplained murders, Congressional factfinding and backbiting, extracurricular sex, unscrupulous lobbyists, and a greedy corporation making billions from the federal budget. Although fictional, the story exposes why investigative journalism is declining, namely, that newspaper editors are pressured by nonjournalistic corporate owners to produce profits, since investigative journalists cost more than quotidian reporters. The journalism in All the President’s Men (1976), in short, is held up as a standard that is under threat of extinction. A second theme is to expose the lengths to which corporations with billions in government contracts might go to protect their income—including bribery, espionage, and murder. State of Play clearly has Blackwater in mind. The most explosive revelation is that Blackwater was sent to New Orleans to keep order after Katrina, and the film in effect accuses Blackwater of having the goal of replacing public sector law enforcement in the United States. Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated State of Play for an award as best film exposé of 2009. The engaging plot itself has twists and turns, leaving filmviewers puzzled about who was responsible for what even at the end, but that is the price paid by director Kevin Macdonald (winner of best film on human rights of 2006 for The Last King of Scotland) in fitting a complex story into 127 fast-paced minutes of film footage. MH