State of Play

Based on the acclaimed BBC television series, State of Play is a complex political thriller about a newspaper journalist (Russell Crowe) investigating the death of a young woman working on the staff of a Washingtson congressman (Ben Affleck), who also happens to be an old college friend. Soon it becomes clear that her death was not simply an accident, especially with shady corporations and mysterious hitmen in the mix...

While State of Play is an enjoyable, well-made film with good performances from a strong cast, it ultimately suffers in comparison to the far superior television series. This is to be expected considering that the series managed to fill 6 hours with a dense, multi-layered story, whereas the film only lasts a third of that time. It actually turned out to be a much more faithful adaptation than I would have expected (almost every scene of the movie was derived in some way from the original series), but the fact is that it all felt a bit rushed, and generally lacking in subtlety. What suffers most are the relationships between the characters - in particular I never got any sense that Affleck's and Crowe's characters could ever have been long-term friends, unlike John Simm and David Morrissey in the TV show. I did think that the (non-sexual) chemistry between Crowe and Rachel McAdams as a young reporter was quite successful though.

Overall I did enjoy the film, but there was never anything particularly remarkable about it. Had I not seen the BBC series I may have had a better opinion of it, but even then I suspect that it's not a film I'd go out of my way to see again anytime soon.

VERDICT: It holds your interest but doesn't do much more than that. Watch the TV series.

IMDb

EDIT: Something that I just remembered that's worth mentioning - the presence of Brennan Brown, AKA "the guy from the Orange mobile cinema ads", rendered all of his scenes unintentionally hilarious. I doubt there's a single UK cinema audience in the UK that won't start laughing when he turns up...