What you have to do is build a plausible alternative story. Washington D.C. Fleeing thief Deshaun Stagg (LaDell Preston) is shot dead by a man carrying a metal briefcase. A passing witness is also shot and left in a coma. The next morning, Congressional aide Sonia Baker is killed by a Metro train. Reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) of the Washington Globe newspaper investigates the shootings while his junior colleague Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) probes Baker’s death. Baker was chief researcher for Congressman Stephen Collins’ (Ben Affleck) investigation into private defence contractor PointCorp. Collins tells McAffrey, his friend and college roommate, that he had been having an affair with Baker and does not believe hat t was suicidal. Frye questions McAffrey about Collins’ relationship with Baker; McAffrey suggests she review the Metro CCTV footage, which proves fruitless. McAffrey finds Baker’s number in Stagg’s phone. A homeless girl named Mandi (Sarah Lord) seeks out McAffrey to sell him items from a bag stolen by Stagg; they include covert photographs of Baker meeting a well-dressed man and a gun with handmade hollow point bullets. McAffrey sends Frye to the hospital, where the witness is coming out of his coma, while he visits Collins’ wife Anne (Robin Wright Penn) with whom he had previously had an affair. Before Frye can talk to the witness, he is killed by a sniper (Michael Berresse). She realises she saw the same man at the hospital and in the metro footage. Collins confirms to McAffrey that PointCorp is secretly the power behind other contractors, thus seeking a virtual monopoly on foreign and domestic government defense and security contracts. If McAffrey can prove that PointCorp had Baker killed, Collins will go public with his findings. A PointCorp insider gives McAffrey an address, where McAffrey encounters the assassin, who shoots at him before fleeing. Detective Donald Bell informs McAffrey that Mandi has been found murdered. Baker’s flatmate Rhonda Silver identifies the well-dressed man as Dominic Foy (Jason Bateman), a public relations executive at a subsidiary of PointCorp. Silver also says she had a threesome with Baker and Collins and that Collins paid off a $40,000 debt of Baker’s. McAffrey resists Frye’s urge to publish (believing Silver to be lying), and Globe editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren) is furious when the story is published elsewhere instead. McAffrey convinces Foy that he is in danger and can best protect himself by talking on the record. Foy reveals that Baker was being paid $26,000 a month to spy on Collins for PointCorp, but had fallen in love and was pregnant with Collins’ baby. She was killed when she refused to continue spying. McAffrey plays the tape of the interview to Collins, who lashes out at McAffrey for not telling him in person about the pregnancy. He accuses McAffrey of caring about his story above their friendship and storms off. That evening, McAffrey confronts Congressman George Fergus (Jeff Danieles) the chief whip who had mentored Collins and recommended Baker to him. He informs Fergus he plans to run a story about Fergus’ link with PointCorp and his undermining of Collins’s investigation … Is your wife speaking to you? Paul Abbott’s 2003 BBC series was a little bit legendary and it gets a nice big screen interpretation here as a cracking conspiracy thriller set in the world of Washington DC and newspapers, you know, those old-fashioned bits of paper that report facts and not ‘alternative facts’. Adapted by Tony Gilroy, Matthew Michael Carnahan and Billy Ray, Russell Crowe is the old school Saab-driving longhair who likes Irish rebel songs and whiskey when his old college roomie Congressman Ben Affleck (when his forehead still moved) gets mired in scandal as an assistant dies in front of a subway train. She’s widely rumoured to have been his romantic interest. When he approaches Crowe for help as the body count mounts, his committee looking into the doings of a security organisation with huge government contracts hoves into view. Meanwhile, Crowe takes on his blogging counterpart at the newspaper, McAdams, as his co-investigator, while tough editor Mirren is under pressure from the new owners. All of these relationships are plausible, beautifully performed and well scripted. This is a taut, pacy, tense workout with everyone at the top of their game and the issues of Homeland Security, reporting and the threat to newspapers from the worldwide web interlaced into nice character studies, as Affleck’s estranged wife, Penn, who has had an adulterous relationship with Crowe, complicates and diverts his attention from the bigger picture. An astonishingly timely piece of work and nice to spot both Viola Davis and David Harbour in small but pivotal roles. Terrific direction by Kevin Macdonald, this is intelligent cinematic storytelling with great characterisation, tangible suspense and fantastic action. The real story is the sinking of this bloody newspaper
mondomovies 