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Blog by Don Kennedy

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State of Play


State of Play is an American adaptation of a 6 part British TV mystery thriller. True to the original a high minded politician railing against government collusion with the private sector is suddenly thrust into a sex scandal. Looking suspiciously set up by his corporate adversaries his natural enemy, the press, come to his rescue. Ben Affleck is the straying US congressman Stephen Collins and Russell Crowe is Cal McAffrey his former college room mate and now a crusty, junk food addicted reporter at a struggling Washington rag. One can only hope that the chunky Russell Crowe made this immediately after his portly role in Body of Lies otherwise the necessary yo yo dieting makes one more curious about the state of his heart. McAffrey’s even crustier boss Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren) is under pressure to publish cash grabbing headlines and assigns McAffrey to collaborate with Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) an annoying blogger from the encroaching online department. When Congressman Collins’ other woman Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer) conveniently dies in a subway mishap we see through the course of investigations that the long suffering Mrs Collins (Robin Wright Penn) isn’t suffering all that badly as she too is having an affair. The body count doesn’t stop at Sonja and with its increase comes a decrease in the certainty of who is guilty as the story twists and turns to its surprising end. Google State of Play and you get “a conference series put on by the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School which deals with the intersection of virtual worlds, games and the law” – all in all a definition synchronous with this pot-boiler.

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