State of Play

The Last King of Scotland director Kevin McDonald teams with screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan for this American adaptation of the hit British miniseries concerning the suspicious circumstances that set a rising congressman and a dogged reporter on a dangerous collision course. U.S. congressman ...more

State of Play, in which an old-media journalist investigates suspicious deaths involving a congressman friend, is set in some anachronistic alternate universe that doesn't have a 24-hour news cycle, deadlines that mean anything, or rival reporters from other outlets who are any good at their jobs. There's also an amazingly unlikely coincidence or two, principals who are slow on the uptake about things the audience already has figured out, and a final plot twist that is eye-rollingly ...more

Director Kevin Macdonald successfully revives the 1970s-style paranoid thriller with State of Play, a taut and assured reworking of the 2003 BBC series of the same name. Paring down the original six-hour series to a lean 127 minutes, Macdonald and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, and Billy Ray barely give the audience a moment to breathe as a veteran reporter and a doe-eyed blogger race through the streets of Washington, D.C., to uncover an ominous political conspiracy. The ...more