State of Play (2009)
2h 7m | PG-13
When a congressional aide is killed, a Washington, D.C. journalist starts investigating the case involving the Representative, his old college friend.
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Studio: Andell Entertainment
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Mystery
Video: 720p
Cast
Russell Crowe
as Cal McAffrey
Ben Affleck
as Stephen Collins
Rachel McAdams
as Della Frye
Helen Mirren
as Cameron Lynne
Robin Wright
as Anne Collins
Jason Bateman
as Dominic Foy
Reviews
Good movie, great cast and interesting plot. A movies as they used to be when interesting thrillers were on the screens with higher frequency.
This movie follows a familiar subset of the thriller genre, that of the journalist investigating a story and discovering there is more involved than what meets the eye, and before he knows it there is evidence of a conspiracy stretching high into government. How high? Well, that of course varies from one conspiracy movie to the next. I couldn’t help but notice that one of the methods of death early on here was later borrowed by the series House of Cards (U.S. version). But there are only so many ways of making possible murders look like accidents or suicides, so perhaps it was coincidental. The acting and the writing were fine, however familiar the story seemed. It just felt like it wouldn’t have taken much originality to alter the plot to separate it from all the other journalistic investigations of government corruption.