One of the great lines from Russell Crowe’s classic movie Gladiator was: Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Well I am not entertained by State of Play and I have not been entertained by Russell Crowe for quite some time.The story is about a team of investigative reporters working alongside a police detective to try to solve the murder of a congressman's mistress. State of Play tries to be a thriller but fails. Watching just 15 minutes of Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer on 24 will give you more thrills than this flick. Everyone in the theater I was in was talking during the film. Why? Because we were all bored. The only interesting person in the movie is the redhead mistress that gets killed in the first act.
Ben Affleck, who plays the politician, has zero acting chops, he is just not believable. His decision to not marry Jenny from the block (Jennifer Lopez) has not helped his career or hers. His best performance to date was playing George Reeves, television’s Superman, in Hollywoodland. Ben’s directing skills are better than his acting. He did a great job with Gone Baby Gone and I would like to see him stick to directing.
Rachael McAdams who was great in Wedding Crashers, The Notebook, and Red Eye stars as cub reporter Della Frye. After all of those great roles I thought she was going to be the next Julia Roberts, I was so wrong, she is just window dressing in this movie. Robin Wright Penn is also in this movie and she also is not great and I can’t remember the last time she was. It seems that she gets lots of work because she is Sean Penn’s wife. Maybe that’s why she called off the divorce.
You can tell I liked this movie right?…shall I continue? OK Russell Crowe is a classic case of actors that win Oscars and let’s themselves go. In this movie he is 30 pounds overweight and there is no passion in his performance. He is just going thru the motions. If I spend $10 I want to at least get a $10 performance, what I got was fifty cents.
Verdict: Skip it and rent any season of 24. It’s been 10 years since Gladiator and Russell Crowe has not entertained me since.
1 comment:
Agree totally with your review. I actually dozed off in the middle of the movie and couldn't understand why Russell Crowe looked like an out-of-shape hippie. Is that supposed to be the look of a hard-edged reporter by Hollywood standards? Good grief. They couldn't do better than that? Why can't Russell find a good script and what happened to Robin Wright Penn? She was so good in Forrest Gump..."run Forrest run!" Anyway, I'll know better next time and wait for these snoozers to go straight to video.
Suzanne
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