The TV series was very good indeed but part of that was down to the well balanced cast, good character definition, and exceptional attention to storyline detail. However, this all took half a dozen hor long episodes to achieve and I must admit I struggled to see how you could strip a lot of that away for a film version, and retain the same impact, with or without a star studded cast.

So that cast then, we have Helen Mirren taking the part Bill Nighy made his own as the editor of the (now American) newspaper, with Ben Afleck as politician Stephen Collins and Russell Crowe as reporter Cal McAffrey, Robin Wright Penn plays Collins’ wife and Rachel McAdams is the rookie reporter at Crowe’s side. The story remains the same for the most part, but with the corporate and political base brought up to date using the present conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq as background to the tale. The journalistic style and portrayal was quite real, and reminded me a lot of the great ‘All the President’s Men’ from the mid 70’s, though it is in no way comparable as a movie. It is a thriller, but even so leaves you thinking about the various aspects of it rather than it just going through the same crash bang formula, so typical of mainstream movies these days. How does it compare to the series? As expected it falls short on the character depiction and there are some leaps of faith because the runtime just would not allow the story to delve as deep, but overall it engages, and whilst it has some implausible moments, it sticks to the source material pretty well.

I have never been a big fan of Ben Afleck, as I do not think he can carry a big part, making anything more than romcom material beyond his ability, here he tries to convey a relationship with Crowe, and it simply does not come off - there is no chemistry between them and it shows. Jason Bateman and Wright Penn probably give the better performances, Mirren was not given half the chances to shine as Nighy in the original, but played her small part perfectly. Crowe, as with most of the elite performers, played himself again, competently rather than with gusto.

8.5/10 Enjoyable, and worth a watch if you like something to think about rather than going through the motions with another series of explosions and car chases.