Remember when every Russell Crowe movie was an event?

Whether it was "Gladiator," "A Beautiful Mind," "The Insider" or "Cinderella Man," Crowe films were big deals, usually accompanied by Oscar talk as well as discussion about whether the actor might be the finest of our era.

In the past few years, Crowe has starred in genre films – "3:10 to Yuma," "American Gangster," "Body of Lies" and now "State of Play" – of steadily decreasing quality and has emerged, in the process, as something of a journeyman actor.

How did this happen? It can't be because of Crowe's offscreen difficulties. Sean Penn still manages a showcase role nearly every time out.

Perhaps it's the middle-aged chunk, which Crowe fully embraces when Cal McAffrey, his newspaper reporter character in "State of Play," tips a near-empty Cheetos bag to his mouth to get every last crumb. If it's Crowe's physique holding him back, then Hollywood's top screenwriters need to write more scripts to accommodate it, a la "The Insider." Because Crowe is not a journeyman, but a special talent, and should be cultivated as such.

That the actor outshines his material in "State of Play" is not surprising but it is noteworthy, since his estimable co-stars Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams do not outshine the same material. They give serviceable performances in a serviceable thriller – one that's tensely paced and enjoyable before the script betrays audience trust.

To spell out or even imply how it betrays that trust would be saying too much, so it's better to view "State of Play" as the Russell Crowe show, with sides of journalism, murder and possible government conspiracy. The picture is more enjoyable that way, since Crowe, whose highly likable character serves as a bridge to most every other character, never lets down the audience.

Crowe always seems smart enough to be a top reporter at the Washington Globe (the film's stand-in for the Post), persuasive enough to coax information from cops and politicians who don't want to give it, and charming and sexy enough, despite the messy clothes, car and apartment, to be a man of great appeal to women.

Cal knows how to talk to women, whether he's joshing with the newspaper's editor (a bosslike Mirren, but when is she not?) or calling out Della, a Globe blogger played by McAdams, on her fast-and-loose relationship to facts. Instead of assuming the gruff, bullying attitude many onscreen newspaper men adopt in the presence of greener and/or female colleagues, Cal eviscerates Della in calm, almost collegial fashion.

McAdams ("The Notebook"; "Wedding Crashers") seems younger and wider-eyed than she did four years ago, when she popped up in every other movie. Part of that comes from standing next to Crowe, but the rest seems a conscious choice by the actress to decrease her star wattage to better reflect Della's secondary role to Cal in the character's professional relationship. All in all, the performance marks a rather mild return by McAdams to Hollywood films after an absence of a few years.

Directed by Kevin McDonald and adapted by screenwriters Tony Gilroy, Billy Ray and Matthew Michael Carnahan (brother of Joe) from a 2003 British miniseries, "State of Play" tries to comment on the current state of newspaper journalism (that might be Ray's contribution, since he wrote and directed "Shattered Glass"). But once it gets past the differences between Della's love for instantaneous Web reports and Cal's affection for the exhaustively reported newspaper piece, "State of Play" is as steeped in journalistic authenticity as the Weekly World News.

Still, it's entertaining to see Della barge past security and into the hospital room of a key witness, or watch it dawn on Mirren's character, in the midst of Cal's investigation of the death of a young woman linked to a congressman (Affleck, well-groomed and often unreadable, like all good politicians), that Cal's longtime friendship with the congressman might represent a conflict.

Also entertaining is the film's production design, which crafts a newsroom far more choked with extraneous paper and other debris than even most actual newsrooms. It's as if the fictional newspaper is angling to do an exposé on the fire marshal and has therefore decided to set a trap.