Affairs of State

Let me save you 97 minutes of your life that you can't get back. The writing is derivative, trite, and predictable. The performances lacked any sort of cohesiveness. The directing felt uneven and the pacing absurdly sluggish. The music didn't help the story at all, in fact it was downright annoying at times. The shots were clumsy and to be honest it wouldn't surprise me if this was made on some sort of smart phone or similar. Unfortunately I can't say anything redemptive about this or I'd be lying.

Has a few good actors such as Thora Birch and Adrian Greneir, the lead has a flat performance throughout with his character written as a highly irrational man who easily gives into his desires without realizing the personal risks involved and hence the movie revolves around his irrational decisions. Would have been a more interesting movie if it only revolved around Thora Birch and Adrian Greneir, but it would not have been sensational then, a lack of intelligent writing to put it simply.

Irrelevant actors and actresses in this couldn't make this feeble script come to life...surprise, surprise. I'll occasionally pick an obscure title with a no-name cast to watch when no other decent titles are out. And sometimes some of them are half-way watchable. But this title had me rolling my eyes five minutes in.

So I experimented and started muting the sound and turned on sound bites from various stand-up routines. It made this fractionally more bearable as I was able to at least chortle through parts and get my mind off of how godawful this thing was to sit through. Without the sound, those poor actors in this looked a little detached like they weren't overly compelled by the material. Talk about a time waster...

The filmmakers were obviously attempting to piggyback on the current political environment but unfortunately this film fails in nearly all areas. The lead actor, David Corenswet, does an abysmal job and is not one bit believable in the role. The other characters come off like caricatures and the dialogue is endlessly littered with cliches. Most annoying was the cinematography which makes it appear like it was shot with an inexpensive camcorder. The film's budget was likely in the $100-150k range and it shows throughout. This is C-level straight to Netflix dreck that should be missed.

Rating this 1 star out of 10. Couldn't even finish the film, it was that bad. The picture quality and sound gave it an amateurish feel. Looks like it was shot super low budget. Skip this one.