10 Best Whodunit Films From Unusual Genres

9. State Of Play (Political Thriller)

State Of Play Afflck Crowe 2
Universal

This 2009 political thriller is based on a BBC One serial. Ben Affleck plays a congressman whose mistress dies in an apparent suicide that looks to him like a cover-up for murder. Affleck goes to his former college roommate who just so happens to be the top investigative journalist in Washington, DC to tell him that he suspects the woman was murdered.

The investigator, played by a disheveled Russell Crowe, then follows the breadcrumbs, linking the murder to a series of other suspicious deaths. Rachel McAdams plays Crowe’s partner in the investigation, a millennial archetype who writes on the same newspaper as Crowe, only she deals with blog posts, so there’s a tug of war between new media and old school journalism: the question being whether to run a story before its ready just in the name of getting more hits.

No political thriller would be complete without some relevant commentary. Here, the murder mystery revolves around a shadowy corporation that contracts with the American government to provide mercenaries in the Iraq War. The film was praised for being a journalistic thriller, years ahead of Spotlight, but was perhaps overshadowed by Ben Affleck’s middling reputation at the time. State of Play deserves a relook.

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