Enemy Of The State - The State Gives Will Smith an Enema

May

9

Enemy Of The State - The State Gives Will Smith an Enema

≡ Category: Action, Movie Reviews By Country, Recommended, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action
Director: Tony Scott
Year: 1998

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Enemy of the State predates the television series 24 in it’s depiction of the ability of surveilance technology to essentially eliminate privacy. The difference is, 24’s attitude towards this development is “Isn’t this cool?” whereas Enemy of the State is more of a cautionary tale.

Reynolds (Jon Voight), an intelligence honcho of some sort, has been pressuring Congressman Phillip Hammersley (Jason Robards) to sign off on a telecommunications bill which essentially will allow the United States government to spy on any civilian without a warrant via various surveillance technologies. When Hammersley refuses to go along, Reynolds has him killed in such a way as to make it look like he suffered a heart attack. Ironically, the event gets caught on tape.

Eventually, the incriminating tape ends up in the hands of Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith), a labor lawyer. Not wanting to get the police or get the FBI involved, Reynolds decides not to kidnap Dean’s wife and son to force him to give up the tape, opting instead to trash Dean’s credibility so that anything he says will be assumed to be a lie.

Actually, there’s a flaw in the story logic. The smart thing to do would be to kidnap Dean, torture the location of the tape out of him, obtain the tape, and dump Dean’s body in the foundation of a concrete building, but that would result in a very short movie. Really, screenwriter David Marconi is using this setup to explore the dangers of surveillance technology, especially if the government is allowed to use it with impunity.

That’s okay with me. Actually, writer David Marconi does a great job of illuminating these dangers while slipping them beneath the covers of a fast moving adventure.

Enemy of the State is one heck of a well-cast movie. Will Smith does an excellent job as the everyman Dean. Jon Voigt excels as the reptilian government operative Reynolds. Regina King is extremely believable as Dean’s wife, who’s inclination is to trust what people have to say about her husband more than her husband himself.

Writer Marconi seems to have a special ax to grind with young technocrats who can’t empathize with the havoc they’re causing in normal people’s lives. Loren Dean, Jack Black, and Jamie Kennedy bottle the essence of twerps whose emotional connection with other human beings is on a videogame level. Barry Pepper is convincing as a dead-eyed assassin. Gene Hackman contributes his customary high level of craft as Brill, the former intelligence specialist who ends up helping Dean.

Tony Scott indulges in some of his patented attention-deficit MTV cutting, but thankfully, this is mostly used for the sequences that involve the depiction of electronic surveillance. For the dramatic scenes, his pacing is punchy, but still on a human scale. This production is grease slick, which is not a surprise considering this is a Jerry Bruckheimer opus. It has his factory stamp all over it, especially the Mickey Mouse, spoonfed musical score by Harry Gregson-Williams and Trevor Rabin. No matter who composes Bruckheimer’s films, they end up sounding the same, like the score for The Rock.

There are also too many dumbassed jokes shoehorned into the screenplay, another hallmark of the Bruckheimer action film factory. But even Bruckheimer’s influence isn’t enough to completely dumb down the literate screenplay by David Marconi. For example, the way Marconi gets his heroes out of the corner he’s painted them into is extremely gratifying.

Enemy Of The State is far and away producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s best movie since 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop, which is more due to the talents of director Tony Scott and writer David Marconi than anything Bruckheimer contributes. It just goes to show you that even the biggest hack gets lucky once in a while.