1998
Starring: Will Smith, Gene Hackman, John Voight, Lisa Bonet, Barry Pepper
Director: Tony Scott
Runtime: 140 minutes
Distributor: Touchstone
Rating: R

Think way back before 9/11 to a time when nobody had even heard of Al’Quada. Before there was The Patriot Act, before administration scandals about data mining, monitoring of telephone calls and public outcry about Guantanamo and the war on terror, there was this slick and somewhat contrived high-tech thriller from Tony Scott starring the then hotter than volcanic lava Will Smith. A sort of Hackers for grown-ups it played into a mindset of mistrust and paranoia in the face of blatant abuse of power that many today feel we are closer to than ever before.

Smith stars as labor attorney Robert Dean, a man trying to juggle investigating mob-related union busting with trying to repair his marriage in the wake of an affair with a colleague. When a nature photographer catches the murder of a US congressman by high-ranking NSA officials on videotape, a black bag NSA team headed by Jon Voight’s corrupt politician comes after the tape hard. Fleeing for his life the photographer offloads the tape to the unknowing Dean, who then becomes the target of an intense and relentless technological assault bent on invade his life and destroy it in order to prevent the tape being made public.

Enemy of the State is the Tony Scott of old – when he just shot at 24fps, didn’t wash the film through any special chemical process and displayed the discipline to hold for a steady shot when it was necessary. Back then he relied solely on his ability to manipulate the camera to serve the story and never more so than here. Scott directs this surveillance driven tale of domestic espionage in a deliberately self-referential style to incredible effect: planting the camera at obscure angles, half behind a cabinet, poking out of a lampshade, a long shot from two blocks away. We literally have all eyes on Dean at all times, even when we aren’t working from the narrative point of view of the NSA.

Enemy of The State is not without its flaws, which come courtesy of people who should really know better. Gene Hackman phones it in as the ex operative who Dean unwittingly drags into the situation, picking a template twitchy mole performance off the shelf. John Voight is little better as the cookie-cutter company man trying to cover his tracks. And it’s more than a stretch that Dean’s wife totally buys his paranoid ravings just because she works for the ACLU and is very anti-government. Essentially a very long chase film, the pace is frantic and Smith is typically excellent as the cool-as-ice attorney who finds himself suddenly powerless, out of his depth and thoroughly confused. Scott keeps the energy up at such a constant for well over an hour, so long in fact that when we finally stop to take in some plot the film almost sags in on itself.

They also can’t resist a flag waving counterpoint that whilst the potential for abuse is staggering, invasion of privacy is undeniably necessary and that goes at odds with the films central theme. That aside, there is a great deal to enjoy here in what ultimately is a very high-concept, well-crafted thriller. Anoracks can also look forward to a who’s who of before they were famous supporting players; including Jack Black, Seth Green, Jamie Kennedy, Jason Lee, and Barry Pepper.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Feature Films, Reviews, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.