I have to say I was a little shocked at just what weak tea this supposedly “gripping” thriller turned out to be. For all its weaknesses, director Kevin MacDonald’s prior picture,
The Last King of Scotland, was salutorily tough-minded (albeit at times wrong-headed) and blunt. This picture, not so much. Diluting and compressing the much-lauded British mini-series of the same name, it rather amusingly shows its supposedly sharp principals taking an unconscionably long time to glom on that, hey, this whole thing just could be a conspiracy on the part of some obvious movie-type bad guys (one is reminded of latter-day zombie films in which the characters can’t quite figure out that you’ve got to shoot the things in the head). The final twist, or “reveal” as they call it these days, is delivered in so perfunctory a manner that you rather wonder if the filmmakers considered that they were actually making a thriller. Or rather, you don’t wonder, because you already know by this point that they’re more interested in creating an elegy for the newspaper business, which they love, love, love. J. Hoberman’s Village Voice
review commends the portrayal of Russell Crowe’s reporter character as “an old-school journo—that is to say, a bearish slob with printer’s ink in his veins and whiskey on his breath.” After some initial antagonistic tussling with his newspaper’s doe-ish D.C. blogger (Rachel McAdams), Crowe’s character brings her around to the glories of newsprint; “This is the kind of story that should leave ink on people’s fingers,” she notes of the wide-ranging scandal they uncover. The picture doesn’t write off the blogosphere completely, but insists on a sunny détene; as Hoberman notes, the picture “comes with a utopian vision of a brave new world in which frisky cyber-sleuths are eager Girl Fridays to their typewriting seniors.” Some have found this vision stirring; I, despite my abiding affection for the old school, and whiskey, thought it a bit goofy, to be frank. In my goofy state, I remembered those old Mad magazine parodies premised on the notion of recasting any given dramatic film as a musical. And as such was inspired to craft this little ditty, to be sung to the tune of
Oklahoma!‘s “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends.” Enjoy!
The
reporter and the blogger should be friends.
Oh,
the reporter and the blogger should be friends.
One
man like to work a beat, the other’s always on his seat
But
that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends.
Media
folks should stick together.
Media
folks should get along.
Reporters
say they need living wages
While
Bloggers are posting for a song.
I’d
like to say a word for the reporter
He’s
got a knack for tracking leads and finding sources.
But
just you watch him put away the scotch!
They
don’t teach that in any journalism courses.
The
reporter is a good and trusty broker, who never tries to soften or appease
You’ll rarely find him swallowing fake stories
‘Bout
non-existent WMDs!
But
the blogger and the reporter should be friends.
Oh,
the blogger and the reporter should be friends.
The
reporter toils to craft a lede,
the
blogger’s got to post with speed,
but
that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends.
Media
folks should stick together.
Media
folks should get along.
Reporters
say they need living wages
While
Bloggers are posting for a song.
I’d
like to say a word for the blogger, he certainly does know how to make his
mark.
As
his Mac and his RSS feed are his only friends,
He’s
got awfully good reason to dish out the snark.
The
reporter should be sociable with the blogger if he e‑mails and asks “Who’s your source?”
Don’t
treat him like a geek or show disdain for his technique.
Will
you get any credit, or money? Don’t be coarse!
Media
folks should stick together,
Media
folks should get along…
And, scene…
I“m in the process of watching the BBC series the film is based on, and it’s great great great, but I understand a lot was cut to both tailor for american audiences and for time (of course). Well worth checking out the bbc series, however!
Frank Jacobs might admire your work here, Glenn.
“And as such was inspired to craft this little ditty, to be sung to the tune of Oklahoma!‘s “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends.”
How very David Poland of you.
Re “How very David Poland of you.”
Maybe so. But I’ve got that punk beat in the scansion department.
I love me a good Oklahoma! parody.
This “ditty” is almost as good as the villanelle you crafted for “Cluny Brown” last year.
My one claim to fame is that I got to watch a scene of a political rally from the TV series of State of Play being filmed in the town where I work in Derbyshire. Unfortunately all my attempts to get casually captured on camera in a crowd scene were doomed to failure!
So now I have to continue to have to live vicariously through the brief brushes with film experiences of others such as a lady I went to University with having the chance to walk purposefully down a corridor of a mocked up police station in the TV drama Butterfly Kiss (where apparently Pete Postlethwaite treated the her and the other extras very nicely!), and a girl I went to college with whose local newsagents in Sheffield was used for a scene in The Full Monty!
Sorry, it was not Butterfly Kiss (that was the Michael Winterbottom film with Amanda Plummer as a psychotic killer with a kinky nipple ring/chain combo!) but Butterfly Collectors that my friend was in with Pete Postlethwait (though by ‘in’ I mean that in the loosest possible sense!)
And in a strange coincidence I’ve just looked on imdb and found that Butterfly Collectors (from 1999) was a pre-State of Play drama written by Paul Abbott!
“The Last King of Scotland”: tough-minded but wrong headed. Could you expand? I thought this movie shared with “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon” the weird quality of being involved with moral crises that aren’t really moral crises. A competent journalist should be able to show that Nixon is a crook. An intelligent public figure should be able to keep calm over the hysteria over Princess Diana’s death. And someone should be able to see that Idi Amin is a murderous demagogue. People make errors, but I would suggest there is a difference on the one hand of being seduced by Castro or believing in 1965 that American intervention in Vietnam was a noble cause, and on the other hand believing in the good intentions of Idi Amin, or believing that the Saudi government is deeply concerned with the status of women, or that mid-eighties Poland has a popular government. For those ideas one takes real stupidity or naïveté, and there’s not much point in watching a movie whose essential message comes down to saying that you shouldn’t be a twit.
Okay, sure, it’s a dumb cliched piece of crap, but any film that suggests that Blackwater is the locus of evil in the modern era is by definition a good one.
Just saying…
@partisan: I said “occasionally” wrong-headed. I think your view on what the film’s about is valid; where I think it shows its wrong-headedness is in the way it continues to elicit a certain kind of sympathy for McAvoy’s character after it’s been demonstrated tenfold how egregious an idiot he’s been. A little more detachment might have gone a long way in this case. It’s a small point, finally.
This movie looks great. Though I haven’t gone to see it yet, if it’s even half as good as the UK mini-series, audiences should be flocking to it. I mean Russell Crowe almost always delivers. The TV trailer (http://displacedbrett.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/state-of-play) shows Crowe looking commanding as always, and now that I see him in action, I can live with Ben Affleck playing this role. Also, it features a great song, “Unstoppable” by Minutes Til Midnight that does a great job of setting the mood. Anyway, I’m way excited for this film – it looks to be the last of a dying breed, the high-budget, adult drama/thriller.