State of Play is well put together and has some intelligence but it's just not very interesting or exciting or gripping for most of the time.

| Aug 29, 2018

This film was well worth the wait.

| Original Score: A | Sep 12, 2017

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Kevin Macdonald's State of Play has, in fact, everything you need to tell a great journalist's story, except a great story.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Aug 11, 2009

It's really a story about the romance of newspapers and a good one - part of a tradition that goes all the way back to Ben Hecht and The Front Page. It may also mark the genre's end.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2009

State of Play succeeds as mainstream entertainment to the point where it hardly makes sense to complain about its pulled political punches.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 29, 2009

Represents mainstream Hollywood filmmaking at its best.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 22, 2009

Once you get over the unlikelihood of Affleck and Crowe as buddies, State Of Play stands as a sterling thriller, benefiting from admirable convictions and an arguable return to form by Russell Crowe.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

Despite the clichéd nature of much of the dialogue and the derivative thriller set-ups, 'State of Play' provides sufficient old-fashioned entertainment value to justify the ticket.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Apr 24, 2009

This is exhilarating, compulsive storytelling and looks likely to be one of the year's cinematic highlights.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

State of Play rattles along very satisfactorily, and Crowe brings to the role a relaxed self-possession and even charm.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2009

State of Play doesn't betray its source material. It's not a huge let-down. It's a perfectly satisfactory evening's entertainment. But I wish it could have been more than that.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2009

Pacy, thought-provoking entertainment. Not perfect, but well worth the admission.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

This is a smart, knowing addition to the great tradition of 1970s paranoid political thrillers, and as such includes several references to Watergate as well as featuring, as it had to, a tense sequence in an underground car-park.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

It's a prestige picture all the way, supercompetent, polished, watchable - but oddly unexciting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 24, 2009

It's a tight, intimate drama. Like Bourne, this enthrallingly twisted plot starts - and stays - on the run but Brit director Kevin Macdonald guns for characterisation and intelligent 'state of the world' musing over expensively exploding helicopters.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

How it plays out makes, in the hands of an excellent director such as Macdonald, a taut and clever thriller - even if it's not as modern as it likes to believe.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

State Of Play is that rarest of movie happenings-a case of the PERFECT line-up of cast and behind-the-lens talent lining up in a great big cosmic doodah thingy of brilliance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2009

The changes make for a well-made, well-paced thriller, but one that is ultimately merely okay at best without the impact that comes from something deeper.

| Apr 21, 2009

The three screenwriters may have been trying to work too many plot strands into two hours; in any case, State of Play is both overstuffed and inconclusive.

| Apr 20, 2009