A 2003 BBC miniseries condensed from six hours to two for its big-screen Hollywood adaptation, State of Play is so bursting with characters, plots, and hot-button subject matter that some unavoidably receive short shrift. Though its English TV heritage and multifaceted current events-laden narrative both recall Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, Kevin Macdonald’s (The Last King of Scotland) film nonetheless largely eschews Big Statement grandstanding in favor of murder-mystery tension. It’s a tack that can occasionally be vexing, as some of the issues this tale nominally addresses would surely benefit from further investigation, whether it’s the increasingly edgy relationship between traditional and new media, the role of corporate interests on news reporting, and – in an echo of this season’s 24 storyline – the rise of profit-first private military contractors in international affairs and homeland security. Yet Macdonald’s decision to use these topics primarily as flavoring for a tale of nothing-is-what-it-seems espionage and investigative journalism is, ultimately, a shrewd (if disappointing) one that keeps the focus on suspense and prevents the taut, knotty proceedings from overreaching.

In the nation’s capital, a thief and pizza delivery man are shot dead by a skilled killer, while at the same time, the aide (Maria Thayer) to married congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), whom she was both screwing and working for as the lead investigator of a Senate committee hearing into Blackwater-esque private military contractor PointCorp, is mysteriously killed by a subway train. Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (a scruffy, long-haired Russell Crowe) is assigned to cover the first deaths but – given that Collins is his former college roommate, as well as married to a woman (Robin Wright Penn) whom he once slept with – inevitably begins looking into the latter case. What he unearths is a tangled web of duplicity, corruption and murder fit for a Raymond Chandler yarn, and one he’s tasked with figuring out while contending with an editor-in-chief (Helen Mirren) under pressure from the paper’s bottom line-driven new owners and a staff blogger named Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) eager to work the story alongside her renowned peer. Double crosses, assassinations, and treachery soon engulf the plucky reporters, and as they breathlessly sift through facts, rumors and revelations, Macdonald’s film achieves suitably swift momentum, the twists and turns coming fast enough to keep one distracted from the obvious, telegraphed denouement lying in wait.

Jeff Daniels, Viola Davis and Jason Bateman round out a sturdy all-star cast that’s asked mainly to embody familiar archetypes, and if Crowe’s hero is less compromised than the script would like us to believe – his severe conflicts of interest never truly putting his noble motivations in serious doubt – the actor’s driven performance nonetheless anchors the vigorous action. That, underneath its flurry of characters and incidents, State of Play adheres to a familiar All the President's Men-style whodunit template is for its first two-thirds inconsequential, since Macdonald keeps the shadowy proceedings brisk and thorny enough to mildly intrigue. Unfortunately, all the commotion is primarily in service of a seen-from-miles-away bombshell that renders the plot – and its half-baked but unpretentious portrait of the insidious influence of private entities in what should be public services (government and media) – far more shallow than it initially appeared. Although, even if the film proves nothing more than a clever, diverting bit of smoke and mirrors, its end-credits depiction of the start-to-finish process of newspapers’ daily creation serves as a poignant coda for the vital yet dying art of old-school, courageous, truth-telling reportage.