Review: State Of Play

State Of Play (2009)
starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, Hellen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman
dir. Kevin Macdonald


Thrillers set around newspaper reporters are pretty much a sub genre unto themselves. These are movies where instead of a private detective with a gun you have a reporter with a pen. In most cases we already know the outcome, these movies are about how the audience gets there. It's about the enjoyment of the protagonist uncovering clues and sticking to his ideals when the Paper's Editor chews them out for doing something that might be slightly unethical, but turns out to be minor since it leads to unveiling the truth. That's the most important part about these films, finding the truth.

State Of Play has all of the the tropes of a classic thriller, including a parking garage scene, but carries one very important singularity that labels this as the last newspaper movie. Bloggers. Behind all of the politics, behind all of the intrigue and "who done it" thrills is a very real story about the death of an old system and the rise of a new one. It also asks the big question: Will the new generation have the same lust for the truth as the old? With the ability to churn out several stories a day because the public demands up to the minute information, will the Blogger's doggedness for facts remain?

Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams are the personification of this debate and each of them give us rich characters that display the flaws of both systems. In a newspaper movie, you'd think it would destroy the concept of the quick to act, go for the fast story Blogger, but it doesn't. As a matter of fact it shows that the old guard may have lost some of their humanity as well. It is an interesting glimpse into the now and the concluding scene leaves us with hope that there may still be hungry reporters out there who believe in the real story, not just a story that gets page views.

Yes, this is a compression of a British miniseries. Yes it has to struggle to maintain a cohesive story and is missing a lot of what made the original so great. But this needs to be judged as its own organism. It is a well made, well acted, excellent glimpse of the end and future of the newspaper reporter.

8.5 out of 10