State of Play is a 2009 political thriller film directed by Kevin Macdonald. It is based on the 2003 British television serial of the same name. The film tells of journalist Cal McAffrey’s (Russell Crowe) probe into the suspicious death of the assistant and mistress of Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). The supporting cast includes Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright, and Jeff Daniels.

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

In Washington, D.C., a man with a metal briefcase kills fleeing thief Deshaun Stagg. A passing witness is shot and left in a coma. The next morning, Congressional aide Sonia Baker is killed by a Washington Metro train.

Baker was chief researcher for Congressman Stephen Collins, as the chair of the Congressional committee investigating private defense contractors, including one named PointCorp. Collins reveals to Cal McAffrey, senior reporter of the Washington Globe newspaper, that he had been having an affair with Baker and does not believe that she was suicidal.

News blogger Della Frye, McAffrey’s new recruit, reviews the Metro CCTV footage, which proves fruitless. McAffrey eventually 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 had been close friends. These items include covert photographs of Baker meeting a well-dressed man and a gun with handmade hollow point bullets. While McAffrey meets up with Collins’s wife, Anne — with whom he had previously had an affair — he sends Frye to the hospital, where the witness is coming out of his coma. However, a sniper kills the witness. Frye realizes that she saw the killer at the hospital and in the Metro footage.

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

A PointCorp insider gives McAffrey a contact address, where he encounters the assassin, who shoots at him before fleeing. Detective Donald Bell informs McAffrey that Stagg’s friend 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 that she had a threesome with Baker and Collins and that Collins paid off Baker’s $40,000 of debt. Believing Silver to be lying, McAffrey resists Frye’s urge to publish.

McAffrey buttonholes Foy at a diner and convinces him that he is in danger. His best protection is to make a statement 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 had become pregnant with Collins’s child. Baker 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 majority leader who had mentored Collins and recommended Baker to him. McAffrey reveals that he plans to run a story about Fergus’s link with PointCorp and his undermining of Collins’s investigation.

Collins and his wife later enter the Globe offices. Collins confirms the story on PointCorp, his affair with Baker, and his belief that PointCorp had Baker killed. Anne then tells McAffrey that Baker slept with her husband “for $26,000 a month”.

As the story goes to press, McAffrey realizes that the specific sum was never mentioned to Collins. He recognizes the assassin as “Robert Bingham” in an old military group photograph featuring Collins. He leaves, telling Frye to hold the story. McAffrey confronts Collins, who confirms that Bingham is an unstable veteran whose life he had saved in a war^[a] and whom he asked to follow Baker, once he became suspicious of her. He says that 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 that the police are already coming to arrest Collins.

Leaving the building, McAffrey is confronted by Bingham. He attempts to kill McAffrey, but is shot dead by the approaching police. At the Globe, McAffrey types up the story headlined “Congressman Arrested”. He puts Frye first on the byline and has her submit the story for publication. The two then leave together.