Producer Paul's Ramblings

Watched this on DVD last night. This is the Russell Crowe movie where he plays a grizzled old newspaper reporter. At the beginning three people are killed, a purse snatcher, a man delivering a pizza on a bicycle, and a woman who takes suicide by subway car. 

The “subway suicide” turns out to be the lead researcher on a Congressional investigation against security company Haliburton…I mean, Pointcorp. She’s also having an affair with the Congressman (Ben Affleck) who is spearheading the investigation. So does that mean she didn’t commit suicide? Is she somehow connected with the other two killings from the beginning?  Come on, we’ve all seen this kind of movie before.

And that’s the major problem.  This movie has a whole been there feeling. We’ve seen this before, and better, in movies like Three Days of the Condor or All The President’s Men. It was well acted, with some especially nice moments between Crowe and Helen Mirren, who plays the editor of The Washington Globe. Affleck did a nice job (but I don’t have a problem with his acting like many do). I found Rachel McAdams a bit weak as the up and coming report–excuse me, blogger, who slowly gets sucked into the investigation and learns the value of the printed (as opposed to electronic) word.

Which leads me to the one thing that was different about this movie, and something I wish they would have explored more in-depth. That is the dawning of the electronic era, which may (some say will) eventually lead to the demise of newspapers in printed form.  Crowe represented old school and McAdams was the new school.  There was some tension between them, but more would have been nice, and would have made the movie that much more interesting.

Overall, this isn’t a bad movie. It’s like a comfortable pair of old shoes.  You like them because their comfortable and familiar, not because they’re sporty and flashy.

6/10