The presses churn, the rollers spit out the newsprint, the headlines scream. It's the tableau from dozens of newspaper movies dating back to the silent era, but it's in danger of becoming the stuff of nostalgia. Scratch that: it IS the stuff of nostalgia, and whatever game effort State of Play makes for its relevance, the scene is the closing credits, not the opening.

The tension between the blogger and the journalist is one of the key themes in this new film, directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) and starring Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. In a way it's a false tension - the unkempt, middle-aged reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) is a dogged knight upholding the traditional techniques and values of the journalistic trade, while the petite, youthful Rachel McAdams (you'll recognize her from Red Eye) is a blogger -- the horror! -- of the new and well-funded internet division at the "Washington Globe." But the plot concerns a Blackwater-like paramilitary company that's on the verge of taking over domestic security and imposing private sector control on American democracy.

Now I ask you: what is the real story? No matter how much the press wrings its hands over the dumbing-down of journalism because of bloggers, the real danger is if the big stories don't get covered, or perhaps more accurately uncovered. And even though the editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren, what are all these Brits doing in this movie about American journalism?) actually says "The real story is the sinking of this bloody newspaper," it seems short-sighted.

Granted, newspapers are in real trouble. I don't have to tell that to you, astute readers of the ever-thinner Press Democrat. But less well known is the evident privatization of the country by the moneyed few, a trend - nay, a conspiracy - documented in Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," apparently one of the sources for this narrative.

The Blackwater stand-in is called PointCorps, but like its model its net worth has skyrocketed following the Iraq invasion and the war on terrorism, and it too offered "security services" in New Orleans following Katrina. The Green Zone is not just a safe neighborhood of Baghdad behind the protective wall of armed protection; it's the safe haven available anywhere for the people rich enough to buy it.

So, that's where the "State of Play" should have gone - indeed, that's where it is headed, convincingly, for the first 100 minutes. Then, all but inexplicably, it turns into a much sorrier story, about suspicion in romance, and loops back on itself, ending pretty much where it begins.

White knight Rep. Stephen Collins (Affleck) heads a committee looking in to PointCorps's dealings, but the murder of his lead researcher (with whom he is having an affair, of course) puts his crusade in doubt. When it turns out that gruff reporter McAffrey himself had (is having?) an affair with Collins' own wife (Robin Wright Penn) it substitutes convenient plot twist for genuine development. (Along the way we're treated to a creepy-funny performance by Jason Bateman, of "Arrested Development," as a fussy PR agent.)

The viewer - at least the viewer sitting in my seat - is able to stay about ten minutes ahead of the movie, and the only surprises are the ones that, upon reflection, really don't make any sense. Still, it's good to see some of these political issues up on the screen in general release, even if they seem just a year out of date. It's been a big year, after all.

Back to the blogger vs. reporter story. This movie seems to believe in the urban myth that there's some sort of tension in newsrooms between old-fashioned reporters and the online department, for which there is scant evidence. And the newsroom is portrayed as a crowded, messy place with outdated computers, harried editors and stacks of yesterday's papers strewn about.

Have you seen the PD newsroom lately? It's not that crowded.