State of Play (2003 vs. 2009)

It's probably not a very good idea to compare a TV mini series with a big screen movie, but considering that today I don't have any other better subject, this is exactly what I'm going to do. "State of Play" is a thriller, let's say .. a political one, released by BBC as a pretty successful (at least in UK) mini series in 2003. In 2009 Universal came up with the American version, which again as far as I heard was received quite well by both public and critics. I however, see a big difference between the two, and I'm not referring to the budget ...

I'll start with the part both have in common - the story. The action starts with an apparently accidental death occured in a metro station of a female member in a governmental commission. This is rapidly followed by a killing in which a petty thief is killed on a side street, the only witness being also shot and sent into a coma by the assassin. The flow of events gets back on the first direction where the chief of the mentioned commission gets into tears while announcing the unfortunate event during a public hearing. Fact that immediately suggests to all the present press that something beyond professional boundaries was going on between the political figure and his recently deceased employee. From here, we move in a newspaper headquarters where a group of journalists, led by a friend of the government guy start investigating the issue ... which ends up being more complicated to solve than the Minotaur's Labyrinth. And from here the difference starts ... the labyrinth part is mainly valid for the English version. For the US one, considering the time is also shorter, the action is a bit accelerated = some walls are broken to reach the exit faster. Even the end twis is slightly different handled, but I'll let the movie to say more. I think it's sufficient what I wrote about the story already.

The first version I've seen was the British one. It looked overrated to me = excessively long - 6 one hour episodes, thing that also caused to be a bit predictable in some parts, although I can't say that it got to the point to be boring. After that, I've seen the US version which compressed the action from 6 to 2 hours = exactly what I was mentioning above. However, the big problem is not that it loses complexity (although, to be sincere, this also matters quite a lot). Because I already knew the story I was able to focus on some other aspects. The first is that the script is definitely worst - from cliche lines to adapting the action in a more annoying "politically correct" US targeted style (only one sample for which I don't see any big reason of change, but it did - the bad guys are not anymore coming from the oil business, being from the evil army private contractors side). Another part is the one related to the actors. Leaving out the thing that in the US version some characters are completely cut, despite the apparently first hand cast, the result is definitely below the BBC production. The only role that might compare is the one made by Helen Mirren ( ... & she's british ... ) that gets pretty much on par with the one of Bill Nighy from the original version as the cynical newspaper editor. About the rest, maybe Russell Crowe might seem credible if you wouldn't have seen John Simm (totally unknown to me up to this movie) in the first version (just take as comparison the last part of the movies and it should be enough). Well it is true that the role is "sabotaged" by the script, but still ...

I won't write about technical aspects, because neither one of the movies impresses much (well, maybe a bit the editing, again in the BBC version). I was thinking, in case somebody would be interested in seeing both of them, to recommend doing it in reverse order of how I did it = first the US version so it won't seem that bad and then the BBC one. But, doing so, it will probably bore you due to the length (although you have "new" elements in the longer version the ending is pretty much the same). So, I don't know which order would be better ... The final idea is that if I would have seen only one, I would have probably considered as an medium quality movie (now the difference between them seems to big for me). So, it may be probably recommended to choose only one version ... want something better - UK ; want something faster - US ;)

Rating:
4 out of 5 - BBC, 2003
2 out of 5 - Universal, 2009