Directed by:
Kevin MacdonaldCinematography:
Rodrigo PrietoComposer:
Alex HeffesCast:
Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, Harry Lennix, Josh Mostel, Michael Weston (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Russell Crowe leads an all-star cast, including Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams & Helen Mirren in the blistering thriller about deception, manipulation and corruption. When D.C. Reporter Cal McCaffrey (Crowe) is assigned to investigate the murder of an assistant to an up-and-coming politician (Affleck), he uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to bring down the nation’s power structures. In a town of spin-doctors and wealthy power brokers, he will discover one truth: when fortunes are at stake, no one’s integrity, love or life is safe. (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (11)
Who was the good guy and who was the bad guy? Who made a mistake and who didn’t? Politics is a dirty game and journalism is too, mostly, and when good people get involved with either of them, it changes them, usually in the worst possible way. That’s more or less what this outstandingly acted detective drama is all about. Crowe gives a standard performance and Ben Affleck is getting better and better. The only thing I don’t understand is the Czech title of the movie. This movie certainly isn’t destined for slaughter.
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If you can already guess what’s going to happen from the trailer, something is wrong. State of Play is undoubtedly an excellent thriller. This is especially true for those of us who like conspiracy theories and enjoy unraveling them together with the film's characters. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to those viewers who have already watched many films like this. Kevin MacDonald tells the story cleverly and very ingeniously lays out the clues, and it's great fun to watch the hard-working actors looking for individual crumbs out of the mysterious forest. Yet, somehow, the entire plot is put together without any stronger vigor or a stronger authorial decal. As a TV craftsman for HBO, he would score points with this film, but in an A-movie thriller, he loses out because of the clichés. I’ll give the film a net 70%, but I just can't round it up to four stars.
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Journalism with not a drop, but rather a hefty bucket of everything I dislike about current Hollywood production. Reporters who get in everywhere, incompetent cops, a stupid shootout during which a complete amateur escapes a professional, a soulless script culminating in a very expected ending, pervasive naivety... There’s nothing enthralling or at least entertaining and truth be told, an hour and a quarter into the film I was ready to turn it off. Misery, misery, misery.
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Take out Affleck's dull, inarticulate expression and Helen Mirren's superfluous character of a principled journalist, and you are left with the best you could wish for in a conspiracy political thriller: a great plot, a dense atmosphere sculpted by tons of political dirt and forbidden machinations, a terrific score, and four or five excellent actors who we trust to live and breathe their characters. But be warned, it's still nothing but highly stylized and cleverly twisted Hollywood entertainment with an intrepid Crowe and an attractive McAdams, where the spectacular pursuit of justice far outweighs the honest themes of classic conspiracy films. But you have to get used to it, because you can't do better than this in the genre today – and personally I’m not complaining. 80%
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Very nice directing and good actors, but the script hardly traverses the three levels of the story: thriller, political-journalistic moralizing and personal drama. The introduction is excellent, full of the unique and very rhythmic direction by Macdonald, but then everything somehow shatters, shreds, evaporates... the legible transnational conspiracy tries to compare with the more serious mental matrix, but it is tedious and quite protracted. The final twists may come as a surprise, but they do not fix the shoddy impression from the previous storytelling. In the end, State of Play is neither an original thriller nor a film that would appeal to us with any message. It has a little bit of both and not enough of either. Nevertheless, mainly thanks to the directing and the actors, it holds up more than honorably. [70%]
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