Product: State Of Play (2008)
Rating: 3.0
Too Contrived
To me the BBC's State of Play was actually two different movies, alas with the parts not matching. It says in the commentary that the first victim's killer was changed halfway through filming by the writer, something no one else here seems to mention, and to me that was only being too clever by half. Not being able to give away the plot, I can only say here that events occurred in the first half of the movie that were never answered in the second half, and that the ultimate 'killer's' motivation was totally unclear in light of previous events, and hardly cleared up in the ending. Still, I do have to give the movie 3 stars for some taut directing and excellent performances, especially by the wonderful Bill Nighy as the newspaper editor. (Although, not to denigrate the performance of the actor who played the antagonist Stephen Collin, he was forced to present us with a character of such raw emotion and physical temper that to believe he was such a successful politician that he being groomed for a cabinet post is fairly laughable.) In any event, in a thriller the script should always come first, and it was here that the movie was at least for me unnecessarily contrived and fatally flawed. The writer and others involved should have kept to the original script - though not overly original it probably would've made far better overall sense.