Russell Crowe's latest star vehicle, "State of Play," came and went so fast last spring that it felt like a hit-and-run accident. But if the film's box-office wreckage has you thinking that it's another "Proof of Life"-style dud, guess again.

"State of Play" is a whip-smart, well-made, and well-acted political conspiracy thriller that will remind you of such 1970s classics as "The Parallax View" and "All the President's Men."

Based on a British television miniseries, the movie's been topically tweaked for this side of the pond. Crowe plays grizzled, old-school Washington, D.C., newspaper reporter. If you cut his veins, they would bleed newsprint ink. But as we all know, his business is dying.

Personally, I'm a sucker for just about any story that's set in a newsroom, from Cary Grant's "His Girl Friday" to Michael Keaton in "The Paper." So, from the start, the movie had me. But Crowe also pulls off a little magic trick as an actor. He's a lumbering bear on the outside, but his mind is like lightning connecting random bits of information where others, like his sassy British editor Helen Mirren, don't see a link.

Crowe is paired with a brassy, young, new-school reporter, a Capitol Hill gossip blogger played by Rachel McAdams. She's the future, he's the past, but together they have to get to the bottom of a scandal involving the shady death of a smarmy senator's mistress. Ben Affleck supplies the smarm in spades.

The story's twists and switchbacks keep coming full blast. And if there's one too many toward the end, well, it's hard to argue with too much of a good thing. Because after a summer of hallow spectacle at the multiplex, it's refreshing to settle in with a clever, grown-up thriller for a change.

Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in "Adventureland," the director of "Superbad" sets a coming-of-age story at an amusement park; in "Sugar," a Sundance winner about a Dominican baseball prodigy comes to disc; and in "Desperate Housewives," season five of the soapy sitcom gets a box set.