Released originally in 2009, State of Play is one of those films that is pretty decent yet didn't generate a huge amount of buzz when it was in theaters. Streaming services tend to pick up these sorts of films well after their "use by" date and no doubt pick them up for very cheap as well. This film is one that I had forgotten existed because it was during a time when Ben Affleck was starting to feel as though his opinion was wanted / needed in political matters leading up to his involvement in Argo a few years later.
This film stars Ben Affleck, a very thin-looking Russell Crowe, and Rachel McAdams.
I should have mentioned Helen Mirren, who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, but she is in so little of this movie that I actually forgot she was in it at all.
The movie is a political thriller that sees Ben Affleck in the role of Congressman Stephen Collins and Crowe as an Irish reporter named Cal McCaffrey who works for fictional newspaper the Washington Examiner. The two of them were friends in college and because of that relationship. There is an important story for McCaffrey to cover because one of Collins' staff members was shot and killed in the first 2 minutes of the film.
[src](https://d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/images/state-of-play.jpg)McCaffrey eventually finds himself wrapped up in a political conspiracy that involves very powerful arms and security firm PointCorp, which is a private security firm that Rep. Collins (Affleck) is in charge of investigating in Congressional inquiries. There appears to be some connection between PointCorp and the staff member that was killed.
I'm not doing the story much justice because it is a bit difficult to explain. The story can get a bit convoluted if you don't pay absolute attention to what is going on during the film, so this is NOT a film you should watch in a half-assed way while doing something else at the same time. You will not know what is going on.
These styles of political thrillers are in my opinion a very risky thing for a movie studio to undertake because it needs to have a certain level of mystery but also can't be too confusing. It also can't be too obvious where the story is heading. I feel as though State of Play did a better than average job of this because the film ropes you into thinking multiple things are true, only to turn it completely around multiple times. I am not normally a fan of political films or even crime or courtroom dramas because it is a very difficult thing to get exactly right.
I am actually kind of surprised that this film go the "go ahead" since the budget was $60 million and these sorts of films never seem to do very well in the Asian audience. It barely made its budget back despite having tremendous star-power for the time.
Should I watch it?
This is a tough one to call. I enjoyed the film but only because the conditions were just perfect: I had already settled in for the evening and had no distractions for the 2 hours it was on. Therefore I enjoyed it. I think that if you are fan of political thrillers that this could be a good choice, but if you are kind of "meh" about the entire genre, you could probably give this one a miss.
