The Paper (1994) review

Presented here is a full day in the frantic life of New York Sun Metro editor Henry Hackett (Michael Keaton), who barely has enough minutes to chug down those Coca-Colas: his reporter wife Martha (Marisa Tomei) is pregnant with their first child, he's interviewing for a gig with (classier) rival paper The Sentinel (but ruins that by stealing information), his boss Bernie White (Robert Duvall) is quietly battling prostate cancer and he's trying to land the "correct story" involving two African-American teenagers arrested for the murder of businessmen from Arizona.  Screenwriter David Koepp (who wrote this along with his brother) worked at Time magazine so he knows the landscape quite well, except it all feels like manufactured mania (inspired, no doubt, by classics such as His Girl Friday) with an egregious third act in which there's a physical fight in the printing room, a hemorrhaging Martha is rushed to the hospital and a bar brawl leads to conniving Alicia (Glenn Close) taking a bullet to the leg.  Since this is a Ron Howard movie, the most pressing matters (and "racial tension") are resolved ever-so neatly for a "tidy" ending ... however, what happens when media tycoon Graham Keightley (Jason Robards) finally gets the bill?  Heads will roll, I imagine.