Posts tagged guns

Damn Fine Filmmaking

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

STATE OF PLAY is a very entertaining political thriller starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, and Robin Wright Penn.

It was adapted from a BBC miniseries of the same name, but has been changed to take place in Washington, D.C., and to be about a reporter for an American newspaper who investigates a murder that becomes very personal for him.

The story begins with a man being shot and killed at night on the streets and an unlucky witness also being shot and sent to the hospital.

Cal McAffrey, a reporter for the WASHINGTON GLOBE, shows up at the crime scene the next day, and we see right away that he has a lot of sources and contacts in the police department.

Then a woman named Sonia Baker is killed in an accident in a subway station, and it turns out that she was the lead researcher and a member of the staff of Congressman Stephen Collins, who is the head of the committee that is investigating the outsourcing policies of the Pentagon.

McAffrey happens to know both Congressman Collins and his wife, Anne, because McAffrey and Collins were roommates in college.

Congressman Collins shows up at McCaffrey’s apartment one night, telling him that McCaffrey is the only real friend he has, and when Collins admits that he was having an affair with the dead woman, McCaffrey has to become both a friend to the congressman and a reporter for his newspaper.

Collins complains about reporters being camped out at his house now, and McCaffrey says, “Nature of the beast: public office.”

Meanwhile, McCaffrey’s newspaper has new owners who are concerned about the paper’s profitability, his editor wants McCaffrey to go with the story before McCaffrey believes it has been completed, and he has been teamed up against his will with the new blogger for the newspaper, Della Frye.

Then there is another murder, and McCaffrey suspects that a private military company that works for the Pentagon is involved.

You can think of the film and the story as “ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN with guns,” and when McCaffrey does something that Della believes is illegal, he tells her that it’s not breaking the law, but is “damn fine reporting.”

STATE OF PLAY is damn fine filmmaking, even though it does leave some unanswered questions.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”