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)
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. ()
Politics is a dirty game. Journalists are buggers. Classic journalism is almost a thing of the past. Tony Gilroy is a good writer. Kevin Macdonald has a nose for interesting, current material. Russell Crowe has charisma even with his dad-bod belly. Helen Mirren can take over even when given a minimum of space. Jeff Daniels has his best years behind him. Rachel McAdams is completely uninteresting. Simply old, familiar truths that are also completely true here. The only truth that doesn't apply here is the one about remakes being redundant, because this one is anything but redundant or bad. It does not tarnish the good name of the British original, rather the opposite. ()
Too bad that the screenwriters focused so much on the journalist plot, which is not that important for the audience. The editor-in-chief character, played by Helen Mirren, and her effort to publish the best article just slows the film down. The viewer is not interested in newspapers, but in revealing secrets, developing relationships between superbly played characters and the threats to their lives in a dangerous high-stakes political game. Wouldn’t Russell Crowe be enough for the journalism plot? Otherwise, however, State of Play is a very decent film, Ben Affleck is fine and the emotions between Crowe and Robin Wright Penn are completely believable. ()
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. ()
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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