Spoilers for both follow, obviously.
Just finished the miniseries, and... well, here's Mick Lasalle, in the San Francisco Chronicle:He's talking about the movie, of course, but his words equally apply to the miniseries. I'll give it this, the cast's acting is so good that they almost sell it - but no, it's a fiasco of an ending, and too bad.
The key thing to know about it, of course, is that the writer Paul Abbott admits on the dvd commentary to not thinking it up until after the third and fourth episodes were written, and it really shows. I can kind of see why he did it - it allowed him to do something other than close with the obvious corporation/government conspiracy the series was building towards - but it just doesn't make sense, and left me deeply unsatisfied.
Just finished the miniseries, and... well, here's Mick Lasalle, in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Any real conversation about "State of Play" has to start with the thing that most stands out about it, and that's the ending - one of the most misbegotten and ill conceived in memory. Don't worry, no details will be given here, but to review the film without commenting on the elephant in the room would make no sense. I've been going to the movies since my mother took me to "A Hard Day's Night" in 1964, and I don't think I've ever quite seen a movie fall so quickly and from such heights as "State of Play." Bad endings; pat endings; disappointing endings; downer endings; cliched endings; predictable, goofy-happy endings - these are common, but we're not talking about anything like those here. 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.
It's as if Macdonald and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray collectively lost track of the story and fell in love with plot for the sake of plot. In its last few minutes, "State of Play" contracts. Its story becomes less important, its message lost, its purpose muddled and confused. Moreover, if you backtrack from the ending and think it through, it collapses altogether, with characters knowing things they wouldn't have known and doing things they wouldn't have done. It's the worst of both worlds: Not only is the ending of "State of Play" no fun, but it makes no sense.
The key thing to know about it, of course, is that the writer Paul Abbott admits on the dvd commentary to not thinking it up until after the third and fourth episodes were written, and it really shows. I can kind of see why he did it - it allowed him to do something other than close with the obvious corporation/government conspiracy the series was building towards - but it just doesn't make sense, and left me deeply unsatisfied.
