Review: State of Play

This journalistic thriller keeps the intensity and intrigue from start to finish, and when coupled with some excellent performances across the board you have a pretty good picture when it is all said and done.
Cal McAffrey is a journalist for the Washington Globe, which also happens to be a sinking ship of a medium as the days of newspapers are quickly dying out in today’s internet fueled news world. That doesn’t keep Cal McAffrey from trying to still be a good reporter though, bribing cops and bending the rules for his stories, Cal is of the old school ilk of news reporters; and he gets what he wants. Cal is in the process of investigating a possible drug related murder that we witness in the opening of the film, when news breaks of Congressman Stephen Collins aide dying on the subway system on her way to the hearings she was chief investigator on that was probing a company profiting off the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan by privatizing the war effort. The death of this aide, Sonia Baker, quickly turns into scandal as rumors/news of an affair with Collins quickly comes to the surface. We discover that Collins and McAffrey were college roommates and that an aspiring blogger at the Washington Globe, Della Frye, might turn out to be a thorn in Cal’s side [Read more...]