State of Play (2009)Director: Kevin Macdonald
Writer: Matthew Michael Carnahan (Screenplay), Tony Gilroy (Screenplay), Billy Ray (Screenplay), Paul Abbott (Original TV Series)
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels
Anytime a movie is advertised as having "a twist that you will never see coming" I tend to stay away. If you don't have anything better to advertise than the movie having a twist at the end then I just don't want to be bothered to see your movie. However, State of Play (2009) started getting really good reviews from sources that I trust so I figured that I would give it a shot. I should have stuck with my first instinct though, I didn't find anything in the movie even remotely interesting.
I just didn't see anything in this movie that I hadn't seen in almost every other political thriller out there. It felt like it just grabbed all of the most cliched elements from a bunch of different political thrillers and threw them all together into one movie. You have the grizzled older reporter that is at odds with the new younger reporter. You have the politician whose affair is found out which leads to the discovery of something much more heinous. It's all there and I have seen it all a hundred times before.
On top of that the acting in the movie was completely sub par. First of all, why do people keep allowing Ben Afflect to act? Have the casting directors not seen any of his previous movies? The man just can not act. Russell Crowe however, is actually a pretty good actor but this was not one of his finest performances. It certainly wasn't a bad performance but it certainly wasn't really good either. The only performance that I can say I really enjoyed was Jason Bateman's. He played his role just perfectly over the top and chewed just enough scenery to make it fun.
I would comment on Rachel McAdams' performance but her character was so useless to the story that there really isn't that much to say. He character just seemed added in just so there could be a foil for Russell's Crowe's character. The only thing she added to the story was the new media vs. old media angle and while that could have been interesting it ended up being such a small part of the story that it might as well have not existed at all. If they had cut out some other stuff and played up this angle a lot more it might have made the movie a lot more interesting though.
The acting and uninteresting story weren't the only problems though. I would like to take this opportunity to beg the filmmakers to invest in a tripod the next time they make a movie. Guys, this would seriously make your job a lot easier. You would no longer get tired while holding up the camera which I am sure is what is causing all the shots to be so jerky and move around so much. I know the hand held camera work this is "cool" right now but honestly it gets annoying and distracting and takes me right out of the movie. I am sorry it just did not work in this movie.
I know I am in the minority on this one because a lot of people seem to really like it. I won't tell you not to see it but I will say that I found it rather dull and uninteresting. You can not say that you haven't been warned. And oh yeah, you remember that twist that "you will never see coming?" Well... it wasn't shocking at all. It was a pretty standard political thriller twist. Maybe that is my fault though. Maybe I have seen to many movies and I expect the new ones to be different than everything else I have seen.
Rating: 3/10
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