Rachel McAdams and Helen Mirren in "State of Play," Universal, 2009

Macdonald and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Billy Ray and Tony Gilroy manage, mostly, to keep everything clear. "State of Play" reminds you, as Tom Tykwer's criminally underrated "The International" did, what it's like to be treated as an adult at the movies. The suspense depends on the steady accumulation of information; the more the characters find out, the more in danger they are. There's no fast, pointless cutting or assaultive action. Macdonald occasionally does some dumb, unnecessary things to ratchet up the paranoia (cutting to shots of black helicopters hovering over Washington), and when a complicated story is this clearly told, the few plot points that don't track stick out. So does the amount of time it takes to get to the resolution in the final scenes; elsewhere, the pace is so surefooted.

But this is a well-crafted and angry film, though it's bound to draw reviews complaining that it romanticizes a dying form of media and takes cheap swipes at the web. Tough. If the death of newspapers meant that journalism was simply migrating online, there'd be a lot less to worry about. It may make me seem like an ingrate to be writing this in an online outlet, but the fact is that instead of providing a home for the journalism being forced out of print, the web has intensified the idiot need to have the story first, whether there is a story or not. It's also accelerated the disposability of news started by the 24-hour news cycle of cable. And when stories are flushed through the system so quickly, it's much easier for the people those stories expose to avoid any responsibility. Journalism cannot exist without time to verify a story, or when reaction replaces reflection. The final credits of "State of Play" run over a montage of a newspaper being printed, loaded into the trucks and being shipped out, all set to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Long as I Can See the Light." What I heard in my head was Edmond O'Brien delivering the final line of "The Wild Bunch":

"It ain't like the old days, but it'll do."

An intuitive actor capable of delicate emotional calibrations, Miller has been written about far more as a tabloid presence, rarely receiving credit for the good work she's done. (Lou Lumenick of the New York Post took that tendency to a cloddish, caddish low last week when he decided to review Miller's physical appearance. Is he auditioning to be John Simon?) Miller's role as Edie Sedgwick in George Hickenlooper's lovely and maligned "Factory Girl" remains a major performance awaiting discovery. That movie was beset by a string of bad luck, and it certainly wasn't helped by the Edie cultists who'd never accept any actress as their object of devotion. But Miller was able to make you believe that this girl could dazzle everyone who saw her. She evoked a tender, protective quality that broke your heart.

"The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," Rawson Marshall Thurber's long-delayed adaptation of Michael Chabon's coming-of-age novel, won't do Miller any favors, even though she's wonderful in it. Carelessly told, with characters and relationships left undeveloped, this is another movie in which we're asked to believe that a young man's callowness equals charm. When that young man, played by Jon Foster, confesses to Miller that there are moments when he believes he becomes invisible, we have no trouble believing him -- he barely registers even as we're watching. But Miller is alive every minute she's on screen -- both tremulous and assured, enveloped in the protections of beauty and yet nakedly vulnerable. Miller's Jane is every beautiful girl it's ever pained you to see head over heels with some destructive charmer, every girl so beautiful it gave you a pang to look at her. In movie after movie, Miller has been given an entrance that causes one suave male lead to stop dead in his tracks. It doesn't matter that the boy who adores her in "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" is such a jejune youth. When Sienna Miller smiles, you believe that any man would want to be worthy of being the recipient of that radiance. You believe you're rediscovering one of the things that makes you go to movies in the first place.

Charles Taylor is our guest critic for the month of April.

“State of Play” opens in wide release on April 17th; “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” is now playing in limited release.

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jake

charles taylor, along with his wife, stephanie zacharek, is the best movie reviewer(s) in the country.