Check out the movie summary by Michael The Moviegoer and find the plot of State Of Play.
STATE OF PLAY = ***
“A Real Twister”
I would hereby like to coin the term for a new genre of film. The Twister. A twister is a thriller with one too many plot twists. “State Of Play” is the latest in a long line of recent twisters. There have been so many lately that they really should have their own genre. They leave audiences frustrated because we know we’ve just seen something that borders on greatness, if only we can edit out those final five minutes.
In “State Of Play,” the mixing of reporters and politicians in Washington D.C. makes for a tense, intelligent thriller along the lines of “All The President’s Men.” Ben Affleck is a congressman and Russell Crowe is the shaggy long-haired reporter for The Washington Globe. His paper’s chief is played by the always respectable Helen Mirren. But whereas Ben Bradlee stuck by and supported his reporters, Mirren spends all her screen time whining about deadlines and declining sales. (Viola Davis, an Oscar nominee for last year’s “Doubt”, is given about as much screen time as your average extra!)
The basic plot involves a couple of murders that may or may not have a connection. Of course, upon closer investigation, clues lead all the way to the halls of power on Capitol Hill and it involves the privitization of Homeland Security where billions of dollars are at stake.
The entire story is set in Washington D.C. except for one completely inexplicable moment when the reporters are suddenly on the streets of downtown Los Angeles in and around the Bonaventure Hotel. Why are they in Los Angeles? How did they get there? Weird!
Screenplay credit is given partly to Tony Gilroy, and this sort of makes up for his way-too-confusing “Duplicity” from earlier this year. This story is much easier to follow and is far more entertaining. That just makes it all the more frustrating when the plot takes one twist too many in the final five minutes only rendering many of the plot points that came before irrelevant. It’ll leave a lot of folks scratching their heads, but still most would agree that they had fun going along for the ride.
DVD Watch: While “State Of Play” is fiction, it owes a lot to its blueprint, the 1976 classic “All The President’s Men”, which is the non-fiction account of the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate scandal that resulted in the resignation of President Nixon. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play the reporters. A beautifully restored 2-disc special edition DVD is currently available and highly recommended.
Michael The Moviegoer
