Jeux de pouvoir

Comme toujours, je n’ai pas été déçu par Russell Crowe. Ben Affleck, je le défends bec et ongles contre toutes les calomnies. Et Rachel McAdams, elle est incroyablement ensorcelante ; elle dégage tendresse et sensibilité. Ce remarquable trio d’acteurs et le scénario plein de suspense et de surprises ont réussi à m’entraîner joliment malgré le fait que je venais de voir Coraline et Millenium. D’autant plus que ce dernier mettait Jeux de pouvoir dans une position difficile. (06/07/2009)

Dommage que les scénaristes accordent autant d'importance au lien journalistique lorsque le spectateur joue un rôle secondaire. Le personnage de la rédactrice en chef Helen Mirren et ses efforts pour publier le meilleur article ne sont qu'un élément freinant. Le spectateur ne s'intéresse pas aux journaux, mais aux révélations de secrets, à l'évolution des relations entre les personnages bien interprétés et aux inquiétudes pour leur vie dans un jeu politique dangereux. Ne serait-ce pas suffisant d'avoir Russell Crowe, un excellent porte-étendard du journalisme? Sinon, très honorable, Ben Affleck détendu et vous ressentez les émotions entre Crowe et Robin Wright Penn sur votre propre peau. (07/06/2009)

Very nice directing and good actors, but the script hardly traverses the three levels of the story: thriller, political-journalistic moralizing and personal drama. The introduction is excellent, full of the unique and very rhythmic direction by Macdonald, but then everything somehow shatters, shreds, evaporates... the legible transnational conspiracy tries to compare with the more serious mental matrix, but it is tedious and quite protracted. The final twists may come as a surprise, but they do not fix the shoddy impression from the previous storytelling. In the end, State of Play is neither an original thriller nor a film that would appeal to us with any message. It has a little bit of both and not enough of either. Nevertheless, mainly thanks to the directing and the actors, it holds up more than honorably. [70%] (18/05/2009)

If you can already guess what’s going to happen from the trailer, something is wrong. State of Play is undoubtedly an excellent thriller. This is especially true for those of us who like conspiracy theories and enjoy unraveling them together with the film's characters. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to those viewers who have already watched many films like this. Kevin MacDonald tells the story cleverly and very ingeniously lays out the clues, and it's great fun to watch the hard-working actors looking for individual crumbs out of the mysterious forest. Yet, somehow, the entire plot is put together without any stronger vigor or a stronger authorial decal. As a TV craftsman for HBO, he would score points with this film, but in an A-movie thriller, he loses out because of the clichés. I’ll give the film a net 70%, but I just can't round it up to four stars. (19/08/2009)

A solid political thriller with great actors, good direction, but a problematic script that results in several characters and scenes feeling empty, and a resolution that is too concise, to the point that after one viewing I’m not entirely sure that everything fits properly. That wouldn’t be a problem in a sci-fi mystery movie, but in a political thriller, which should rely primarily on the plot turning flawlessly and the effect of the final twist, this is a pretty serious shortcoming. 6+/10 (28/05/2009)