State of Play, directed by Kevin Macdonald
A political researcher falls under a subway train – was she pushed? And when her boss, Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), cries in public at the news of her death, the secret of their affair comes out. Was Collins the heartless exploiter of this young woman? Or was she killed by corporate interests threatened by Collins and his committee's investigations into their murky world? His friend, reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) and blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) hunt for the truth in a paranoid political conspiracy thriller full of action, menace and pretty satisfying plot twists.
State of Play is adapted from Paul Adams's BBC telly series of 2003. If you saw that, you may be disappointed by the film – but then, it can't really be helped since you know all the twists already. The six hour BBC story has been condensed into two hours, and quite a bit has obviously been lost – like the affair between Cal and Anne, which here is pushed into the characters' past. It would be hard to compete with the BBC acting, too, though Crowe and Affleck make a pretty good fist of it – especially considering both were late stand-ins for Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. State of Play was originally due to release before Christmas, and it now seems a strange throwback to the Bush era. Some of it you feel you've seen before, like the dirty, Bourne-y, seedy view of Washington, and Helen Mirren in Jane Tennison mode as the editor. But these are pretty minor quibbles, really. State of Play is a well-made, effective translation from British miniseries to American movie. It's pretty exciting and involving: not as haunting as its 1970s models, perhaps, but a highly entertaining two hours, all told.
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