State of Play (film)

Macdonald said that State of Play is influenced by the films of the 1970s. He explores the privatization of American Homeland Security and, to a minor extent, journalistic independence, along with the relationship between politicians and the press. Released in North America on April 17, 2009, by Universal Pictures, the film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $88 million worldwide.

Plot[edit]

In Washington, D.C., fleeing thief Deshaun Stagg is shot dead by a man carrying a metal briefcase. A passing witness is also shot and left in a coma. The next morning, Congressional aide Sonia Baker is killed by a Washington Metro train. Reporter Cal McAffrey of the Washington Globe newspaper investigates the shootings while his junior colleague Della Frye probes Baker's death.


Baker was chief researcher for Congressman Stephen Collins' investigation into private defense contractor PointCorp. Collins tells McAffrey, his friend and college roommate, that he had been having an affair with Baker and did not believe she was suicidal. Frye questions McAffrey about Collins' relationship with Baker; McAffrey suggests she review the Metro CCTV footage, which proves fruitless.


McAffrey finds Baker's number in Stagg's phone. A homeless girl named Mandi seeks out McAffrey to sell him items from a bag stolen by Stagg; they include covert photographs of Baker meeting a well-dressed man and a gun with handmade hollow point bullets. McAffrey sends Frye to the hospital, where the witness is coming out of his coma, while he visits Collins' wife Anne, with whom he had previously had an affair. Before Frye can talk to the witness, he is killed by a sniper. She realizes she saw the same man at the hospital and in the metro footage.


Collins confirms to McAffrey that PointCorp is secretly the power behind other contractors, thus seeking a virtual monopoly on foreign and domestic government defense and security contracts. If McAffrey can prove that PointCorp had Baker killed, Collins will go public with his findings.


A PointCorp insider gives McAffrey an address, where McAffrey encounters the assassin, who shoots at him before fleeing. Detective Donald Bell informs McAffrey that Mandi has been found murdered. Baker's flatmate Rhonda Silver identifies the well-dressed man as Dominic Foy, a PR executive at a subsidiary of PointCorp. Silver also says she had a threesome with Baker and Collins and that Collins paid off a $40,000 debt of Baker's. McAffrey resists Frye's urge to publish (believing Silver to be lying), and Globe editor Cameron Lynne is furious when the story is published elsewhere instead.


McAffrey convinces Foy that he is in danger and can best protect himself by talking on the record. Foy reveals that Baker was being paid $26,000 a month to spy on Collins for PointCorp, but had fallen in love and was pregnant with Collins' baby. She was killed when she refused to continue spying. McAffrey plays the tape of the interview to Collins, who lashes out at McAffrey for not telling him in person about the pregnancy. He accuses McAffrey of caring about his story above their friendship and storms off. That evening, McAffrey confronts Congressman George Fergus, the chief whip who had mentored Collins and recommended Baker to him. He informs Fergus he plans to run a story about Fergus' link with PointCorp and his undermining of Collins's investigation.


At the Globe offices, Lynne refuses to run the story without named sources on the record when Collins and his wife Anne come in. Collins confirms the story on PointCorp, his affair with Baker, and his belief that PointCorp had Baker killed. Anne tells McAffrey that Baker slept with her husband "for $26,000 a month".


As the story is going to press, McAffrey realizes the specific sum was never mentioned to Collins. He recognizes the assassin as "Robert Bingham" in a military photograph featuring Collins. He leaves, telling Frye to tell Cameron to hold the story. He confronts Collins, who confirms that Bingham is an unstable veteran whose life he saved in Kuwait and whom he asked to follow Baker once he became suspicious of her. He says he never asked him to kill her and initially thought, as did McAffrey, that PointCorp had done it. McAffrey says this is not about Fergus or PointCorp, but about decisions Collins made that resulted in four deaths. McAffrey reveals he has already called the police.


Leaving the building, McAffrey is confronted by Bingham as Bell and the police arrive. Bingham attempts to kill McAffrey but is shot dead by the police. Back at the Globe, McAffrey types up the story headlined "Congressman Implicated in Murders". He puts Frye first on the byline and has her submit the story for publication, and the two leave together.