Lack of good storyline.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Every time I figured Kevin Macdonald's State of Play was going to descend into cliché and corn, somebody on screen did something I didn't expect. The whole premise of the movie, its "high concept," is a cliché, but Macdonald decides he's going to make something more than a dreary veteran-and-cub-reporters-crack-the-big-government-corruption-case movie. Even if the viewer is predisposed to dislike a journalism movie--the way my wife despises courtroom dramas and we both cringe at jailhouse suspensers--he or she is going to find the characters, for the most part, engaging, or, at least, comfortably recognizable. Three things that caught my eye, besides the plot twists that kept me interested: Supporting characters Helen Mirren and Jeff Daniels underplay their roles, although Mirren's character spends a good deal of the movie snapping and fuming at Russell Crowe and Rachel MacAdams, and Daniels is very believable as a Congressional leader who doesn't have all the evil moves you come to expect in movies.The second grace in State of Play is how little Macdonald uses Ben Affleck. He's a critical part of the story, but Affleck also underplays the part of a corrupt, trapped US representative. He has his moments of being dramatic, but there wasn't a bit of scenery getting chewed when he's confronted with his bad behavior. Finally, in a political thriller like this, made by our friends in Hollywood--who never seem to pass up a chance to be hopelessly partisan in their quest for creating a Workerz Paradise--have made it subtly clear that Affleck and Daniels are--Egads!--Democrats. They're slimy and corrupt and phoney as all get out, but they aren't eeevil Republicans!A movie that is founded on a tried-and-true cliché, plot twists that take the viewer by surprise, characters that don't consume the sets the way my Chihuahua wolfs down cat food, and some freaking originality in saying that corrupt politicians can be liberals? Sheesh, what's the world coming to?

State of Play is a film which weaves a tangled web and then struggles mightily, and ultimately unsuccessfully, to untangle it. It's a political thriller in which an intrepid newspaper reporter, with the assistance of a cute blogger, tries to get to the heart of some nefarious conspiracy. But the reporter gets bogged down and the movie does too. The plot is quite convoluted which leads to both boredom and glaring plot holes. It's a story with twists, meant to keep you guessing. But by the end you may no longer be interested enough to be bothered to hazard a guess at what's really going on here.The story deals with PointCorp, a shadowy private defense contractor which is being investigated by Congress. It's Congressman Stephen Collins who is leading the investigation. We meet him just as he is delivered some crushing news: the woman who was his lead researcher has just been killed by a Washington Metro train. Looks like suicide but Collins doesn't believe it. He would certainly have some personal insight into the woman's frame of mind seeing as he was having an affair with her. Once that information becomes public Collins is enveloped in quite the scandal. This of course is not at all bad news for PointCorp. To try to get to the bottom of this Collins turns to old friend Cal McAffrey, investigative newspaper reporter. Cal is on the case but, much to his chagrin, he finds himself teamed up with perky young Della Frye, blogger from the newspaper's online operation. Suffice to say Cal doesn't have much respect for cutie-pie bloggers. Anyhow this odd couple works the story and the film begins to take numerous twists and turns as it moves to what is ultimately a rather disappointing end.A quite unkempt Russell Crowe plays Cal and Crowe provides a solid foundation for the film to build on. With the likes of Helen Mirren, Robin Wright and Jeff Daniels on board this was always going to be a well-acted movie. Rachel McAdams also does fine work in the role of young, naive Della. Ben Affleck, playing Collins, doesn't make for the most convincing congressman but he's not so bad that it really hurts the film. What does hurt the film is that the story just never works properly. It's all about a big conspiracy but there's never enough of a hook to make you really care about that conspiracy. And the film keeps piling on more and more information, so many different strands of the plot which need to tie together. It's all a bit too much. This is a story which desperately needs a big payoff but the ending is not nearly as smart as the filmmakers apparently thought it was. In a film which needs to be filled with suspense there really is very little of it. Honestly the subplot about the pressure on the reporters and their editor, what with the dying newspaper industry and all, seems more compelling than the big conspiracy that the film is actually about. There's a hint of an interesting story in this film but that story gets buried under the weight of the unwieldy plot. Some good performances, especially from Crowe who creates a very interesting character, but the performances are not enough to salvage the film.

Ah yes, another liberal nightmare fantasy flick, this time about the threat of a private defense contractor - and if anyone thinks the "PointCorps" of the flick is not supposed to be Blackwater, please seek treatment for terminal naivete - who is secretly seeking to take control of American society. Of course, how this is supposed to happen when defense budgets are getting slashed to the bone under liberal governance is a mystery. If you want a real nightmare scenario, someone should make a flick about how the kudzu-like tentacles of the federal bureaucracy in the form of the IRS, the EPA, the FDA, the FTC, the Education Department, HHS, HUD and the whole alphabet soup of unelected bureaucrats is insinuating itself into every aspect of our lives. But considering the moonbat crowd that runs Hollywood, I'm not holding my breath. Considered purely as an action/mystery flick this isn't bad as pure entertainment, but the political overtones are offputting.

The base premise is just one notch above any average scandal and conspiracy story. But I must admit the later twists are great. The look like they are downplays but they are not. The characters are not so deeply developed, though. And the focus is not so deep on the rest of the characters beside Cal and Stephen. I personally like the stable fast pace of how the mystery unfolded.Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck did a great job here, while McAdams provided just enough for her character. Helen Mirren was able to give this movie some added toughness, even from a not so significant character, which is nice. A 7 out of 10 is solid from me.