State of Play (2009) on Netflix
PG-1320092h 7mCrimeDramaMystery
Sonia Baker, a congressional aide, dies under a Washington Metro train, a death called an accident. Reporter Cal McAffrey finds she worked for his friend Stephen Collins, who admits their affair.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.1/10167,504 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
Congressman Stephen Collins chairs a committee examining private defense contractors, among them PointCorp. When Sonia Baker, his chief researcher, is killed by a Washington Metro train, the death is first taken for an accident. Collins tells Cal McAffrey, a senior reporter at the Washington Globe and an old college friend, that he and Sonia were lovers and that he does not believe she took her own life. Cal works his police contacts while Della Frye, a news blogger newly recruited to the paper, presses to publish quickly. Word that the death may not have been accidental sends both reporters into Sonia's work on the hearings and the company the hearings target.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about State of Play (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- One week before filming was to begin in November 2007, Pitt left the production: he disagreed with changes the studio had made to the script since he agreed to star. Macdonald had delayed filming by a week for a scene-by-scene review with him, and told the actor, “I don't think we want to make the same film.”
- The studio preferred to press on with production and initially said it intended to sue Pitt for reneging on his “pay or play” deal, which would have earned him $20 million.
- Affleck replaced Edward Norton, who had joined the project in September 2007 but hit a scheduling conflict when Pitt's departure delayed production, as he was committed to film Leaves of Grass for Tim Blake Nelson. Norton asked Universal Pictures if he could be replaced, and a deal was struck with the agency representing both actors.
- For a scene shot at the Library of Congress the production used several real-world journalists among the extras, including Bob Woodward, Margaret Carlson, Bob Schieffer, John Palmer, E. J. Dionne, Katty Kay and Steven Clemons.
- Washington's Metro is notoriously discriminating about which productions it allows to film, and after the deaths of three Metro employees in 2006 its media relations office was reluctant to allow the scene; it assented only because the script did not explicitly show a death.
- Director of photography Rodrigo Prieto shot the film in two distinct visual styles: the scenes featuring the media in the anamorphic format on 35mm film, and the scenes focusing on the world of politics in high-definition video with the Panavision Genesis digital camera.
