State of Play

Premiere Rob Calvert

This is a smart script. There is a wealth of twists, but none of them have to beat you over the head.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Nothing is as it seems in State of Play, a crackerjack political thriller in which no individual, profession or institution gets away clean.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Spins a thorny tale of political corruption laced with personal sleaze.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Acting-wise, the showstopper is Jason Bateman, with a diabolically entertaining turn as a smarmy PR man remarkably free with confidential information.

Charlotte Observer Roger Moore

As dense as a Watergate-era newspaper and as immediate as a blog, State of Play is an absolutely riveting state-of-the-art "big conspiracy" thriller.

TV Guide Jason Buchanan

A rare treat for cinema lovers starved for the days when scruffy newspaper reporters fearlessly sniffed out corruption, State of Play delivers the kind of conspiratorial thrills that would have made Pakula proud.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Until State of Play slips into its small cascade of improbabilities near its end, it proves a thoroughly engaging and professional enterprise.

Empire Dan Jolin

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.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

An intelligent adult thriller about the death of newspapers.

Film Threat Scott Mendelson

It is a refreshingly traditional star-driven thriller.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

For about 115 minutes, State of Play tells an alarming, tightly constructed story, with serious things to say about journalism and the state of the country. The movie appears to be all but over - and likely to stand as one of the best films of 2009. And then the filmmakers add one last embellishment, and they blow it.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Intelligent and engrossing saga.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

State of Play is far from a great movie, but it's sentimental in all the right ways.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Co-written by Tony Gilroy, who penned the tricky "Michael Clayton" and the even trickier "Duplicity," State of Play displays its savvy without being quite so showy.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

State of Play isn't a kinetic fireball like the second or third "Bourne" installment; like its protagonist, it's defiantly old school, "Three Days of the Condor" bleeding into "All the President's Men."

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie never quite attains altitude. It has a great takeoff, levels nicely, and then seems to land on autopilot. Maybe it's the problem of resolving so much plot in a finite length of time, but it seems a little too facile toward the end.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

There's no question that State of Play feels a little rushed and the density of plot can be daunting, but the resulting tale unfolds with an urgency and sense of verisimilitude that will keep most viewers intrigued and involved without losing many along the way.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Affleck may strike you as off-putting at first, hitting wrong emotional notes, but hang on. State of Play keeps the twists coming.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

The result is a paper-thin alliance between the old-school Cal and the new-media Della. Crowe, husky and whisky-voiced, is warm amidst all the plot mechanics, and McAdams, perky and efficient, is a smart foil for him.

Variety Todd McCarthy

In the end, though, it's Crowe who must carry the most freight, which he does with another characterization to relish. Still bulky, although not as much so as in "Body of Lies," long-tressed and somewhat grizzled, he finds the gist of the affable eccentricity, natural obsessiveness and mainstream contrarianism that marks many professional journalists.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Features a handsome production and terrific performances.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Though solidly plotted and executed all around, the film, too, feels like a quaint relic from another era, aping the form of journalistic thrillers like "All The President’s Men" while missing much of their urgency.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

It neither embarrasses the original, nor is superior to it in any way.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The overall lack of subtlety is a riot - there's even a cautionary production of "Peter and the Wolf" happening in the background during one journalist-politician showdown at a Beltway gala. Still, it's a pleasure watching this cast make the most of the material.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

An effectively involving journalism-cum-conspiracy yarn with a bang-bang opening and a frantic closer.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It's tricky, it's surprising, and it's largely faithful to the original mini-series, but in context it's a nonevent. It's like a time bomb that's never dismantled but never explodes. The movie is good enough that the ending leaves you … not angry, exactly. Unfulfilled.

The New Yorker David Denby

Crowe has an animal quickness and sensitivity, a threatening way of penetrating what someone is up to, a feeling for weakness in friends as well as opponents. He seems every inch a great journalist; it's not his fault that the filmmakers let the big story slip through their fingers.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Those Hollywood tricksters have managed to shorten the story while slowing the pace -- all of a sudden, minutes are passing like hours.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This manages to make the real seem generic, rather than the other way around.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Somehow when State of Play should be at its stomach-clenching best, the tension simply evaporates.

Slate Dana Stevens

After a bracing first hour, State of Play defaults on the most basic promise of the conspiracy thriller. Instead of luring us down an ever-darker and twistier path, it strands us in a tedious and ill-designed maze.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

There is nothing we haven't seen here before in terms of chases, intrigue and betrayals, so for all its A-list cast and production values, the film comes off as routine.

Time Richard Corliss

The film's director, Kevin Macdonald, who did "The Last King of Scotland," is not a flair fellow. The chase scenes interpolated into this version have no special oomph; the encounters no residual kick. Paging Ridley Scott? Oh, sorry, too late. So there it is: another film that can't compete with a TV show.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

A superficially clever, self-important and finally incoherent thriller.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

There's simply too much stuff for a two-hour feature, and three writers, including Tony Gilroy, haven't figured out how to boil it down into a readily comprehensible narrative, or how to solve the problem of an ending that goes blah rather than bang.

New York Post Kyle Smith

State of Play is bordered by the states of absurdity and cliché.