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'State of Play' entertains
The Advocate
The concept of adapting and remaking old films and TV series continues with the release of “State of Play,” a political thriller starring Russell Crowe as an investigative journalist probing the death of a Congressman’s mistress in Washington, D.C.
The movie was a six-part British program that has been condensed to fit into a format one-third the length of the original series. I’ve never seen the original program, but from what I’ve read, most of the main characters and parts of the plot have been retained. Hence, I’ll review this movie as if it were never related to a television series.
The film starts fast as a sinister looking man chases down a kid carrying a briefcase and shoots him a few times. He picks up the briefcase and proceeds to shoot a bicyclist riding by that witnesses the event. This takes place at night while many people are still out and about (which would lead me to believe it probably isn’t later than 10 or 11 p.m.), but cops are never actually “on the scene” until daylight. As for the shooter? Long gone. Stay with me here and remember this for later.
Next, we see a woman walking around the Rosslyn Metro Station being stalked by – guess who – the sinister looking man. Of course, this woman gets a little bit too close to the tracks in a very crowded station. As the train draws closer to the stop, the scene cuts away and we find out that there was an apparent “suicide” attempt, as this woman was killed. The audience is led to believe that the sinister looking man was somehow involved, since he was stalking her. The audience would be right in assuming so.
Crowe decides to look into the murders, but his editor-in-chief (played by Helen Mirren) of The Washington Globe assigns him a sidekick to help with the story. Quickly, both Crowe and his sidekick (played Rachel McAdams) begin to find out that this story isn’t quite what they bargained for, as deaths and murders that didn’t appear related begin to link together quite curiously and lead back to a college friend of Crowe’s, who happens to be that D.C. Congressman (played by Ben Affleck).
While the movie is well put together, it has definite weak points. Of those weak points, one of the most exciting scenes in the movie suffers from one. Crowe is given the address of someone who could turn out to be a strong source and heads to the place, only to find – that’s right – the sinister looking man lives there. Crowe recognizes him as the possible assassin and stumbles over his words before taking off, telling his associates to call the police, but the sinister looking man follows him to a basement parking lot where he pretty clearly plans to kill Crowe. Gunshots are fired, but Crowe is able to escape by latching on to a vehicle driving quickly through the lot. The vehicle, however, crashes into a cop car that was earlier called. This is where the biggest problems begin to arise.
All of the scenes involving the sinister looking man end abruptly, leading the audience to believe that he has managed to get away. In the first incident, being late in the evening in D.C., despite gunshots begin fired, no one is alerted. It doesn’t matter how deep into an alleyway a person is; a gunshot is loud. In the second incident, dozens and dozens of patrons surrounded the woman that he pushed into the oncoming subway train.
I’ve struggled to come up with a way for him to push the woman into the train and not be identified or witnessed by anyone, let alone walk away without one of those patrons trying to stop or slow him so that the cops could arrest him. In the scene where he tries to kill Crowe, he inexplicably escapes without the cops trying to chase him down at all.
How is it that no one knows who he is, no one can identify him, and the cops are exceedingly nonchalant about attempting to catch a certified murderer?
If you ignore the weak points, the movie ends up being pretty entertaining. If those weak points weren’t so atrocious, this would have been a far better movie. There are enough twists and turns to keep the audience involved and excited, but there are also enough holes for the logics to realize that such a conspiracy flick is unlikely to construct itself ever, or if it does, it won’t be weak enough to be cracked by two veteran reporters.
Rating: 7/10