State of Play the Movie

Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) has pretty much directed a new masterpiece. State of Play, based on the BBC series by Paul Abbott, is a political thriller, a conspiracy that reaches from Congress to the industrial war complex to the conscience of the press and the audience.

It is also a big horray for the endurance – and accountability – of the printed word vis-à-vis the blogosphere.

Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck are excellent.

This is an intelligent film (as all the dailies are saying)  and worth the price of the ticket.

You might figure it out, but then again, you might not.

There’s a lot that is conventional about the film but if you like this genre and the hard-knock issues it presents for viewers to chew on, you’ll feel like you have seen a real film even if you think you may have seen parts of it before. Still, this is original enough.

I liked it.