Movie Review: "State of Play"

Rated: PG-13 for some violence, language including sexual references, and brief drug content.

Release Date: 04.17.2009 Wide

Starring: Ben Affleck , Russell Crowe , Rachel McAdams , Helen Mirren

Director(s): Kevin Macdonald

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Film Genre: Drama , Thriller , Crime
 
Until the final reel, State of Play (based on an eponymous BBC Television series), has all the makings of a well made film noire: Bad weather, dark lighting, ominous music, more plot twists than a back road in Connecticut, and corruption in places high and low. Why, there are even three murder attempts in the first reel, two of them successful. The storyline fits together like a well crafted jigsaw puzzle. Plus it has an excellent cast: Helen Mirren as foul-mouthed newspaper editor Cameron Lynne, Ben Affleck as philandering congressman Stephen Collins, Robin Wright Penn as his wife, Jeff Daniels as the House Majority Whip, and Jason Bateman as a sleazy, not too bright PR man, each playing his part to perfection. Rachel McAdams is convincing as a newspaper blogger who earns her reporting stripes solving a string of four seemingly unrelated murders in a buddy-film subplot opposite Russell Crowe.
 
The film opens with a drug addict running from a gunman (Michael Berresse) who catches and kills him. He also shoots a pizza delivery man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then the mistress of Congressman Collins, whose committee is investigating the “mercenary” private army on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, dies mysteriously underneath the wheels of the Washington Metro. All roads lead to a vast conspiracy with $30 or $40 billion at stake for the company hoping to profit from the privatization of homeland security at its center. Crowe’s McAffrey is hot on the trail as dead bodies pile up. He is also dispensing PR advice to his college roommate, Affleck’s Collins. Subplots appear to spin out of control, but each peels a layer from the movie's onion—until the final reel, that is, when a surprise ending both confuses audiences and leaves unresolved the plot's biggest element, the conspiracy and the company at its center.
 
State of Play carries a PG-13 rating, largely due to Mirren’s lines. Other than that there is little objectionable for children. But not even adults have a chance of making sense out of it all.