Adaptations and remakes have been around in Hollywood as long as Hollywood has been around. If there's a beloved book or a even a successful film, people who are out to make money through films will seize any opportunity to create another successful film. The easiest way to do this is to take a film which has made a lot of money and simply have a sequel. Another, as is the case with Kevin Macdonald's latest film, State of Play, is to take something that worked in one medium (in this case a miniseries for television) and make a film out of it. Would the filmmakers think they could, in two hours, tell the story any "better" than had originally been done in (as it was in this case) six? Probably not, but then that didn't stop feature length films of classic literature such as Brideshead Revisited or Pride and Prejudice being made despite being done impeccably and necessarily more deeply before on television. The challenge is to take a story that should by all accounts make the basis of a good film and tell it as well as possibly in a "reasonable" timeframe.
Here the story is that two people die on the same day, a young man is shot (along with a passing witness to the shooting) by a hitman and a woman falls in front of a train. Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) is a journalist reporting the shooting and his former college roommate is Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) who was having an affair with the woman, his research assistant, who died at the station. It soon becomes clear that there are links between the two deaths and we follow McAffrey and his fellow reporters discovering the "story" and how it effects the Collins' personal and professional life, coupled with his relationship with Cal.
This is the type of film that is much more easily defined by what it isn't than what it is, but overall it's a solid effort all round. The acting is nothing special but fine (only Helen Mirren as Crowe's editor really comes to play) and the direction is rather strange as Macdonald seems to have stripped away most of what makes him an interesting filmmaker and gone very low key as a result. The editing, usually such a calling card and bedrock of his storytelling, occasionally stymies the film as it has all these people talking the plot forward and then an action scene devoid of tension can be thrown which does nothing other than drag it down.
Relationships are underdrawn and skated over and some subplots (especially one involving Collins' wife, played by Robin Wright Penn with no hope of being able to stretch herself) only serve to muddy the water but the basic drip-feeding of information is enough to ensure an inherent interest is maintained for the majority of the run-time. It's a testement to the quality of the source material that despite questionable casting, writing and directorial choices being made, State of Play is still rather watchable. It's not a great film, it's not taut enough for a thriller and it's far too lightweight to be taken seriously as a political statement like the 70s films such as All the President's Men it almost certainly attempts to emulate. A decent film, far from a waste of time, but substantially below its potential all things considered.