State of Play - Blu-ray Review

[Jon Liu]

State of Play Blu-ray Review

Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn
Directed By: Kevin Macdonald
Studio: Universal Studios
Runtime: 128 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Blu-ray Release Date: September 1, 2009

Movie
State of Play opens with two mysteriously motivated deaths - A thief carrying a metallic briefcase is murdered for the contents that he stole and a woman shown standing at the edges of a subway station right before she kills herself. The woman in the subway turns out to be someone of importance. She is an assistant to Congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck), named Sonia Baker, who was the lead researcher in a big investigation of a company named PointCorp. Seasoned journalist for The Globe, Cal McAffree (Crowe), is assigned to look into the thief’s murder to find a possible story, while online columnist for The Globe, Della Frye (McAdams), is put on the Sonia Baker story. McAffrey and Frye set out individually to cover their assignments only to find their stories are linked to one another. As the two search for information, Frye and McAffrey find more and more bits of information lead back to one another’s stories and McAffrey suspects that all of it is part of a bigger conspiracy.

Digging deeper McAffrey also senses that Collins’ assistant’s death, which originally was thought to be a suicide, was a result of foul play linked closely to PointCorp and seeks to build his affirmations that this death and the thief’s murder all point to a major political conspiracy. Meanwhile, Collins finds himself in an incriminating predicament when his affair with Ms. Baker is revealed to the public at which point he turns to his old college friend, McAffrey for comfort and advice.

While McAffrey continues unravel this possible bombshell story for his company he finds himself torn between helping his friend, Collins, and pursuing the story of his career. As McAffrey and Frye envelop themselves more in the story the importance of revealing it publicly becomes even more critical as pieces begin to fall into place. The two of them rush to meet their company’s deadline to find facts about the story in order to print the entire story.

Director Kevin Macdonald takes us for a ride on this turn-after-turn political mystery which keeps you wondering, “Who’s really behind this?” all the way to the end.

Rating
State of Play is rated PG-13 for some violence, language including sexual references, and brief drug content.

Video
State of Play is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio with a solid video transfer. The color palette is relatively muted and many of the sequences take place in darker situations. Black levels remained rich throughout those darker sequences and retained plenty of detail. Overall resolution is impressive especially in close up shots, but is not limited to just close up shots. The film occasionally shows some film grain, but never did it get to the point of distraction. Contrast stayed solid throughout, even in lower light situations. The film maintains a solid video transfer, however I never found myself overly impressed at any particular moment with the transfer.

Audio
This film is treated to a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that is mostly dialog driven, but there are occasional action sequences that do make use of the lossless audio codec. During those action sequences the sound is immersive with gunshots echoing throughout the sound stage. Low frequencies lent themselves to the action sequences nicely. What I found more surprising were moments of low frequencies outside of the action sequences like in support of helicopter flyovers. Surround usage is left mostly to ambient noises from the busy city or inside the newspaper building. The music lends nicely to the mood of the film sequences as well. Dialog for the most part was audible, however I found a couple of occasions that conversations were harder to hear. There weren’t many of those, but it’s worth mentioning.

Extras
There is a featurette: “The Making of ‘State of Play’” with a runtime of 19 minutes and two deleted scenes. There is also Universal Studios renowned U-Control, which only has two options, “Picture in Picture” and “Washington D.C. Locations.” Picture in Picture just has some videos of location shoots, on-set footage and various comments from cast and crewmembers as well as some still shots from production. Washington D.C. Locations uses Google Earth to show actual movie shoot locations and trivia about specific landmarks in Washington D.C.

Overall
As far political thrillers, this one is pretty good. There does seem to be a lot of praise around this film, and while I enjoyed it, I can’t say that I agreed entirely with all the praise I heard. While it started off intriguing enough it seemed to slow down to me and while the premise of the story was pretty good, the execution really felt somewhat lacking to me. As the story unfolded I found that I didn’t care that much about the characters involved enough to make this an involving movie. The video and audio aspects are both solid and lend to the movie as a whole, as well.

[Sonnie]

I am kinda on the fence with this one. I watched it, and although I somewhat enjoyed it, I don't think I will watch it again. Definitely a rental only IMO.

[Jon Liu]

Sonnie, I am kind of in the same boat. As I mentioned, I thought it was pretty good, but it wasn't as good as other people have mentioned. Likely a one-time viewing for me, too.

[recruit]

Some excellent actors in this movie but I just could not get into it, it just did not seem to get moving, I was actually looking forward to seeing it also which was a shame, could of been a lot better