State Of Play - Letting The Audience Down

May

13

State Of Play - Letting The Audience Down

≡ Category: Action, Drama, Movie Reviews By Country, Suspense, United States, Worth A Look |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama/ Action/ Suspense
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Year: 2009

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK

The general critical consensus on State of Play is that the ending sucks. I agree. The sad thing is that it was completely avoidable. The ending is the same in the film’s souce, the BBC miniseries, State Of Play. Why did the movie’s producers insist on this ending? Who knows.

Otherwise, State Of Play is a wizardly adaptation. Screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Tony Gilroy manage to boil down the miniseries down into a fast moving, suspenseful and thought provoking two hours without sacrificing narrative coherence or even character. In fact, these screenwriters have managed to incorporate urgent contemporary American matters into the screenplay, such as the privitization of our military, the collusion of the rich and large media companies to suppress news that doesn’t fit their agenda, the death spiral of newspaper reporting, and the rise of wet behind the ears bloggers (ahem).

Director Kevin Macdonald keeps a tight rein on his materials. The opening chase sequence is exciting, in the manner of Chaser, the South Korean thriller. Macdonald can be subtle, too. He adopts different visual strategies for Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe. As Representative Stephen Collins, Ben Affleck is bathed in chilly blues and a large depth of field, precise and stage-managed. Reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) has a shallow depth of field — he’s surrounded by visual chaos.

I’m not generally a big fan of Ben Affleck, but casting him as a politician is a master stroke — as an actor, he’s incapable of telling the truth. Russell Crowe, on the other hand, is the opposite of narcissism in this movie — he’s the essence of a scabby, bottom feeding reporter.

Helen Mirren, as the paper’s editor, doesn’t have as much room to swing for the fences as Bill Nighy did in his role as the editor of the newspaper in the British miniseries, but every time Mirren opens her mouth, she leaves scars.

Rachel McAdams is fine as the blogger who ends up working the story with Cal.

Oh, yeah, the plot.

When the aide of a Senator and a street punk are murdered, reporter Cal McAffrey must solve their murders while simultaneously preserving the reputation and career of the Senator, who happens to be his personal friend.

It’s a shame. The moviemakers had a world class political thriller on their hands. They did a killer job of adapting the miniseries to current events in the United States and yet, they weren’t willing to do what was necessary and rewrite the godawful ending that sabotaged the original British miniseries.

Just how bad is the ending? It takes a large, important story and makes it small and uninteresting. It breaks your heart. On this blog, the ending cost State Of Play at least one and half stars, maybe two.