User reviews

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.

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.

Cliched and wooden. Sad to see Mimi Rogers stoop this low. Always liked her. /J

Whoa, no wonder every single reviewer is trashing this thing. It's difficult to fathom how this drastically flawed script ever got greenlit by any producer. They must be imbeciles. This was so poorly written and produced that I can only guess that the writer and/or director were in some way related to the geniuses throwing money into this. Maybe it was a blackmail situation. Or maybe worse than that. Adding insult to injury, the "acting," if you can call it that, was embarrassingly amateurish. This lame-ass effort isn't even worthy of a b film classification. File this one away under "Nobody except twelve people will bother to watch this."

Thriller? NOPE! Boring? YEP! Compelling writing? NOPE! Horribly directed? YEP! (although even a competent director couldn't have save this POS). Good performances? NOPE! Wishing I never saw a 70 year old actress trying to have sex? YEP! Waste of ninety minutes and endless brain cells? DOUBLE YEP!

Ignore all the bad reviews. Most of them are upset because of their political views. I am not political at all and was able to watch this movie not really caring about political views but focusing on the story. It wasn't great, but at the same time it was not bad. Some people were expecting a thriller. Not sure why as it was clearly listed as a drama. The acting was good, and the story line very believable. The ending a bit sad and left me wanting a bit more. Overall I give it a 6.2

Just too much amateurism to handle. The "young campaign aide" actor needs to stick with after shave commercials.

Every director and producer knows (or at least should) that any decent film starts with a decent script. The best actors in the world can't save crappy writing. Not that this film had uber acting talents splashed across the screen anyway, but just saying. There is no shortage of stupidity in Hollywood. None so more obvious and on full display than in Affairs of State, an exercise in such blatant mediocrity and bland storytelling that it makes one wonder if anyone even bothered reading the poor writer's material prior to filming. If you like yourself, heed the advice of everyone who has reviewed this manure.....it REALLY is that bad.

AFFAIRS OF STATE is a smart, brutal, and often very funny throwback to the '70s style of political thrillers that were written with smart adults in mind. David Cornswet plays an ambitious Washington DC climber who tries to sleep his way to the top of a leading Republican contender's campaign. The young man quickly finds out that he is not the spider he thought he was, but the fly who keeps getting caught deeper in a web of deceit, sociopathic culture and murder. Director Eric Bross and writer Tom Cudworth deliver one of the best films of 2018, and it deserves a wider release.

Pretty good and steamy political drama. But as usual anything coming from Hollywood the movie leans Left and the corrupt and conniving characters in the film are actively a conservative belonging to a third way, quasi-Republican political party called, the United Party. However the movie steers away from hammering rhetoric and instead revolves on the characters and their actions which is quite decent and surprising considering the reactions and political climate we are in today in the United States.

I only made it about 20 minutes into this pig. Good thing I got it free from the library. I am only out 20 minutes of my life.

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.

About 55 minutes into the film the plot starts to develop..... The story is as one dimensional as a flattened can of beer. They tried to make it interesting with some tawdry sex scenes, lots of cussing, and a little blood, but it didn't work. It's a shallow muddy mess of a movie. The actors were pretty good, but the characters are totally underdeveloped and lack personality. Even the dialogues were nonsensical. You can't draw a straight logical conclusion anywhere in the storyline. It reminded me of those drinking games where one person says one sentence, and the next person has to continue the story with another sentence, until finally you get sick of it and end it abruptly with one outrageous final line.

To sum it up - a naive guy goes to DC, meets some disturbed people, and says and does nothing about it and something predictably bad finally happens... in the last few minutes.

Mimi Rogers is a gross and disgusting actor. She is repulsive and clearly had to know someone to get where she's gotten in the industry. Her roles fit her which might have a lot to do with where she's always stood in her sordid roles. Time to retire yourself, Mimi. In my opinion, you should be paying to get roles out of complete desperation. I have to keep typing characters. 223 more. You're not worth it. Bow out. It's beyond gracefully. Take up needlepoint or something of the like. Voiceovers using an alias perhaps? You are one of the worst, classless actors I have had the displeasure of viewing amongst casts of prominent actors in my lifetime. I'm 64.

State of Affairs was well received, it had a strange detachment to it where one felt a fly on the wall... pretty much one becomes a spy camera in the movie and it's definitely immersive. The strangest thing about the movie was it felt like being in the moment, as all good writer's director's and producer's aim to be, to create an atmosphere whereby one feels connected to the sentiments and drives or hopes and of course fears of the human condition. Usually, when a film makes you face certain truths, this can inspire one to reassess one's own life and, particularly relating to greed and sexual corruption. I think this movie can be undervalued by many when not realising that with so much power that can come to one, one becomes fragile and transparent. This is where truth illuminates us all. How do we transcend the depravity of sex, drugs and rock and roll? State of Affairs makes a generous expose of who we are behind the mask...

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...

This was a good story. The actors were well chosen. They sure look like the types we see around politicians now. There was a lot of political rhetoric that was shallow and tawdry. Could be that's how it is today. Sad, but possibly true. Maybe politics was always like this and we just didn't know it. It's crazy that this is what we've come to.

I was expecting a thriller. Instead my hubby and I sat through a horribly made drama that had us dozing off throughout. The writing was very weak and tries to lecture you about how greedy and corrupt Conservative politicians are in D.C. This felt more like a very low-grade Lifetime movie for TV.

If you put aside the politics, the story was completely unispiring and uninteresting, poorly crafted and absurd. Like others have mentioned, the production values were subpar. The acting was fairly flat across the board. The lead actor, an unknown, didn't have much range unless you call bending down to remove your pants, range.

When the credits rolled (which was the best part), we actually felt quite sorry...not for ourselves for sitting through this hot mess...but for the people who actually spent time and money making it. Poor souls...perhaps they should've become politicians instead. Giving this 1 star out of 10.

I'm not usually a reviewer here but I was reading a couple of the reviews and wondered if I'd seen the same Movie!

The politics in this were pretty even handed: everyone's a bit morally suspect - except for the idealistic conservative senator who's gives really great speech about conservative values without being a raging fascist. I'd vote for him over the current crop of lunatics, anyway.

Adrian Grenier plays a totally believable Machiavelli - but thats got nothing to do with his politics.

It was refreshing to see a film that DIDNT embrace the usual left wing tropes, even if it paid lip service to some of them.

Politics aside, I really enjoyed it. A nice variety of characters you don't often see (Mimi Rogers as a sexually actively older woman in the vein of Lady Macbeth just kills it!) and the last 30 minutes or so really is a thrill ride.

Pretty much al l the acting was great.

Technically the film looked and sounded great; I'd love to see it in a theater.

If I have to pick a negative the music didn't do much for me and there were a couple of scenes where I felt they were a bit short of extras - but at this point I feel like I'm quibbling.

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.

Purely entertaining. Glanced at a few of the more scathing reviews and have concluded that these individuals may have hoped for a more cerebral type of discourse focusing on critical legal theory. Perhaps auditing an upper division course at an Ivy covering that subject matter may have been more to their liking? Also, I noticed that the word "abyssmal" was misspelled.