Review: State of Play (2009)

By Bryronic Thursday April 30, 2009

State of Play Brings a State of Confusion.

I’ve always been a sucker for newspaper movies. Let me rephrase that; I’ve always been a sucker for journalist movies. I’ve never seen Newsies, and I’m not going to, but ever since I saw All the President’s Men when I was a kid I’ve always had an affection for tales about hack reporters or writers digging deep to find out what’s going on when things on the surface don’t add up. Fortunately, State of Play is just such a movie.
State of Play follows a newspaper reporter (Russell Crowe) whose old college friend (Ben Affleck) is a disgraced congressman caught in the middle of a large conspiracy concerning national security. Along the way, Crowe gets aligned with a young upstart reporter (Rachel McAdams), and the two work together to find out what’s what and who’s who in all of the madness. Basic plot synopses are fun!

The movie starts out doing a fantastic job telling a great story. The script is tight and the acting follows suit. Crowe and McAdams have good chemistry as an odd-couple journalistic duo that, thankfully, do NOT end up romantically entangled. Ben Affleck also does an admirable job as the congressman, and Robin Wright Penn does her usual solid job as Affleck’s wife. Throw in fantastic supporting roles by Helen Mirren and Jason Bateman, and you’ve got yourself a pretty sweet movie. That is, until the last 10 minutes or so.
Out of the blue, there comes a plot-hole the size of Affleck’s head (literally speaking…seriously; dude’s got a pretty big squash), which more-or-less ruins the entire movie, never mind the fact that it all comes about by way of a very Encyclopedia Brown-esque revelation on behalf of Crowe’s character. It was really very disappointing. I enjoyed the first two hours, and to have that all dashed on the rocks made for a very unfortunate experience.