State of Play

[Rating: 8.5/1o]

Genre: Political Thriller

Many were stunned when Congressman Stephen Collins displays a sudden fit of emotion on public tv regarding the death of his lead researcher, Sonia. It turns out that the congressman had been having an affair with her. Collins enlists his old friend Cal McAffrey,  a reporter, to assist him with investigating her death, and it is slowly revealed that Sonia’s death was linked to something bigger and more sinister than anyone could have imagined.

Wow. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a political thriller, and even longer since I’ve watched a thriller that totally captivated me from start to end, and not just in a ‘I want to see what happens’ way. Here we have a pretty powerful cast, and admittedly they were much better than I thought they would be. My favourite characters were Congressman Collins, Della Frye (the blogging reporter assistant McAffrey) and Cameron Lynne (the iron-fisted editor of the Washington Globe).  Collins, despite what he had done still managed to be sympathetic – for once I’d say it wasn’t really the guy’s fault for the affair – and I have a new found respect for Ben Affleck who carried out the role with unexpected finesse. I have been an Affleck fan for awhile, but was a little doubtful about him playing this edgier and meatier role… oh well, I’d say this movie, coupled with his performance in He’s Just Not That Into You made a strong comeback for him this year. And Della Frye was also a rather likeable character, she’s focused and driven and thankfully wasn’t cast as the annoying assistant. It was nice to see that there was someone to represent the world of blog reporting. And Helen Mirren was just delightful to watch. She has this understated presence and her character, Lynne had this dry straightforwardness, which held me from the moment she compared the pros of hiring Frye to McAffrey (she said something about Frye being cheaper but able to churnout new content every hour). In this show, characters are neither absolutely good or bad, which made it all themore enjoyable. Recently I seem to be liking shows with characters like these.

Also the show was not too long-winded and the action/dialogue scenes were well balanced, which something I find rare in political shows – the dialogue/political bits tend to be complicating, dry and wordy for me, but I didn’t have much trouble understanding what was going on in State of Play. The interesting twist at the end was good, even though it left me a little sad. Something else that held my attention, was that despite the main story being political thriller, it was also very much an insight into the process of publishing a newspaper article, from the first sparks of idea to the final product getting churned out by printing press machines. I wonder if that was deliberate, or if it’s it’s just me who thinks that. Anyhow, it was interesting since I just did a course on publishing and editing. The story also raised a bunch of interesting ethical issues about how decisions are made as to what goes into the article and how a investigations should be carried out.

A solid, well-paced political thriller that isn’t too heavy on the politics and can be enjoyed by the general mystery fan as well.