FAQ

State of Play is a political thriller. It begins with the suicide of Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer), lead researcher on the staff of Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). When it appears that Collins and Baker were involved in a romantic relationship and that her death may not have been a suicide, reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe), a college friend of Collins and his wife Anne (Robin Wright), begins to look into Baker's death.

State of Play is a political intrigue based on the six-part TV series State of Play (2003), which first aired on BBC One in 2003. The TV series was created by English screenwriter Paul Abbott. It was adapted for the film by screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, Peter Morgan, and Billy Ray. For the film, the locale was changed from England to Washington, D.C.

State of play is a political term for "the current situation".

The movie opens with a young black man running down an alley and hiding behind some garbage cans. A few moments later, he is shot by a white man carrying a briefcase. When a pizza delivery boy pedals by on his bicycle, the man shoots him, too. Later in the movie, it is explained that the young black man, Deshaun Stagg (LaDell Preston), is a drug addict who gets money by stealing briefcases and selling them back to the owners. Unfortunately, Deshaun stole a briefcase belonging to the man who was tailing Sonia Baker. The briefcase contained photos of Sonia, a gun, and a bag of bullets. When Deshaun met with the guy to sell him back the briefcase, the man wanted no loose ends, so he shot Deshaun to shut him up. He then shot the pizza delivery boy because he had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and seeing something he shouldn't have.

The Night Pat Murphy Died, performed by Great Big Sea.

When Cal went to the morgue where Deshaun Stagg's body was being held, he looked through Deshaun's effects, found his cell phone, and wrote down all the numbers that Deshaun had recently called. Then he dialed them all to see where they might lead. On the fourth call, he suddenly found himself listening to Sonia's voicemail. It was a total surprise to Cal, but it clued him to the fact that Deshaun and Sonia were somehow linked.

Deshaun's girlfriend Mandi Brokaw (Sarah Lord) took the photos of Sonia out of the boosted briefcase before Deshaun sold it back to his killer. Mandi then phoned Sonia on Deshaun's cell to warn her that she was being stalked by a psycho. Combined with the type of bullets used and the precision by which the killer shot Deshaun and the pizza delivery boy, Cal concludes that the killer had a military background. Knowing that PointCorp, a private military contractor to whom the U.S. Defense Department outsources the majority of their contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is staffed 100% by ex-military and that Sonia was the lead researcher on Stephen's investigation into PointCorp, Cal puts two and two together and concludes that PointCorp had Sonia killed in order to get at Stephen.

It's actually Cal's colleague Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) who recognizes the face of a man at the hospital just before Vernon Sando is killed as being the same man she saw on the surveillance tape of the subway platform just before Sonia was killed. Cal then makes contact with a PointCorp insider (David Harbour) who tries to identify the killer from a picture made from the surveillance tape. The insider eventually identifies him as someone who used to work with Fred Summers and provides Cal with an address. When Cal goes to Summers' apartment, he is told by the roommate that Summers is not there. Cal recognizes the roommate as the man on the surveillance tape. He is eventually identified as Robert Bingham (Michael Berresse).

The photos of Sonia show her crying in the presence of an unidentified man. When Della makes phone calls looking for leads, she encounters a person who asks her whether "Dominic" gave him her name. Later, she learns from Sonia's roommate that the man in the photos is Dominic Foy (Jason Bateman). After some digging, they discover that Foy is a public relations man for PointCorp, so Cal calls him in for an "interview". Foy reveals that Sonia was being paid $26,000 a month by PointCorp to spy on Stephen Collins.

The $26,000 sum was revealed to Cal by Dominic Foy, a detail that was not made public nor disclosed to Stephen. For Anne to have known about it, she either was involved in the plot to spy on Stephen or she was clued in by Stephen himself. Most viewers conclude the latter, as does Cal. For Stephen to have known Sonia's salary, he had to already know that Sonia was working for PointCorp, which means that Stephen has been setting up Cal, getting him to believe he was uncovering a big PointCorp conspiracy that Stephen knew nothing about, when in actuality he knew all about Sonia's activities.

PointCorp needed someone to spy on Stephen, since Stephen was heading up the committee to investigate PointCorp's misuse of military contracts. Sonia was heavily in debt, and when Dominic Foy recommended her to PointCorp, she was happy to take the job. Then it fell on Majority Whip George Fergus (Jeff Daniels) to recommend her to the hiring committee. Cal catches on to him when Fergus, who claims that Sonia was the daughter of an old family friend, doesn't even know Sonia's mother's first name (Janine).

The card reads "Sonia Baker's family says hi."

The biggest concern of those who enjoyed the TV series is that the movie would not be able to capture everything from the six-part TV series. The movie, however, is not meant to be a condensation of the TV series but uses the series as a jumping point. Those who have seen both the TV series and the movie note that there are a number of differences. For example, Cameron, a male character played by Bill Nighy in the series, becomes a female character (played by Helen Mirren) in the movie. An additional plot point showing how the print media is dying in the face of blogging was added to the story. There appears to be some confusion about certain details, e.g., how Anne Collins knew how much Sonia was being paid and whether or not Stephen Collins knew what Robert Bingham was going to do, that aren't made clear in the movie. The Stagg family, who play a significant role in the miniseries, is absent from the film. Dan Foster, Cameron's son, who is one of the lead investigators in the series, is absent from the film as well. In addition, a number of the secondary journalists from the series are eliminated or condensed and the investigation is greatly condensed. Also, the original miniseries involves an investigation into an oil company. The movie, released six years later after the Iraq War, concerns military contractors.