ENEMY OF THE STATE
Rebecca Wan
Directed by : Tony Scott
Written by: David Marconi
Main Cast : Will Smith (Robert Dean), Gene Hackman (Brill), Jon Voight (Reynolds), Regina King (Stacey), Lisa Bonet (Rachel Banks)
Official Website: www.enemyofthestate.com.
Rating : * * * * out of * * * * *
This Review Filed: November 22, 1998.
Be Very Afraid
The first time I saw a movie where a satellite was able to zoom in on a car license plate, I snickered. Recently I was able to log onto a Web site (www.terraserver.microsoft.com/) and see the roof of my house--or yours. If Microsoft gives that away for free, I believe the National Security Agency can read license platesThe website Ebert cites doesn't seem to be able to reveal images of my rooftop, but boy is that idea scary. And so is ENEMY OF THE STATE.Roger Ebert's Enemy of the State review at http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/20enem.html.
Although its producer is Jerry Bruckheimer, ENEMY OF THE STATE strangely lacks the insipidly emotive musical orchestration and swelling crescendos that have characterised most of his Hollywood blockbusters. Also absent are the usual breathless, slow-motion sequences that lovingly frame the (always male) protagonist in his semi-heroic pose (remember Nicolas Cage's Injection Scene in THE ROCK? Remember the slow-motion frames of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as they ran bare-chested down a road in pursuit of bad guys in getaway cars?)
And there's more: where are the weakly motivated music video explosions, the action sequences that always, always terminate in some gash-adorned singlet-wearing hero walking out of a fire? Where are the stupid one-liners that pass for comic relief? Why are there moderate stretches of dialogue that go without a mind-numbing, chest-thumping musical score in ENEMY OF THE STATE?
You know what I mean. Remember THE ROCK? No, but you'll remember the strirring soundtrack. Remember CON-AIR (see Inkpot review)? Like BAD BOYS and the most recent Bruckheimer production ARMAGEDDON (see Inkpot review), it was an endless music video that just happened to have some astronauts and Liv Tyler in it. The Bruckheimer signature is the piecemeal use of plot to string together beautiful, slow-motion images (be they explosions, gunfights or love scenes) that will play forever to annoyingly stirring music in your head.
Anybody who describes ENEMY OF THE STATE as the usual mindless action thriller, or as typical Bruckheimer work, must therefore be horrifyingly undiscerning. For ENEMY OF THE STATE, directed by Tony Scott, is many things, and mindless is not one of them. Its premise is far more interesting (if ultimately somewhat farfetched), its characters far more significant and its direction far less emotionally charged than recent Bruckheimer productions.
ENEMY OF THE STATE stars Will Smith as Robert Dean, a lawyer with a happy family who is confidently handling a labour union case when the film begins. A taped murder of a congressman (Jason Robards) accidentally passes into his hands after he pisses off members of the mob, and everything goes downhill from there. Dean is framed in both workplace and at home. He loses his job and his wife kicks him out of the house. Trying to restore his credibility, he seeks out a previously anonymous contact, Brill (Gene Hackman), who helps him realise that his pursuers are potentially more destructive than his mob enemies.
There are two action lines to ENEMY OF THE STATE, one involving gangsters who are annoyed with Dean's interference with their labour disputes, and another concerning an eerie National Security Agency (NSA). The congressman's murder is vaguely explained as because he refuses to pass a telecommunications bill that will give the government the power to violate people's privacy. The NSA, however,already appears to be able to get all the information it needs on anyone. Staffed with youngish, computer nerds and led by a standard issue Posessed Villain (naturally they chose Jon Voight for this role), the NSA team feverishly attempt to recover the tape that Dean has been given, and this is the ominous part.
They monitor Dean's life to the minutest detail, slowly disassembling his career, relationships and credibility with a combination of press smears, surveillance photos and tracking devices. The film is eager (perhaps a little too much so) to emphasise the terrifying sophistication of their equipment, and the menacing omniscience of their reach. Their pursuit is aided by satellite rooftop transmissions, tracking devices (they plant six on Dean alone) and an alarmingly quick access to personal information and bank records, as well as the surveillance systems of other independent elements. In one scene, Dean runs into a tunnel and they impersonate police authority in order to enlist the help of the tunnel surveillance authorities to capture him. In another, they forget to explain how the NSA acquires the video surveillance tapes of a lingerie store.
For the most part, ENEMY OF THE STATE is fast-paced and intense, yet measured in its use of melodrama. A stronger than usual cast of characters who are given moderately intelligent lines also make this one of the better action films to have been released this year. Especially interesting is the intertextual reference to Coppola's 1974 THE CONVERSATION. In one scene the NSA team tracks the conversation of Dean and contact Rachel Banks (Lisa Bonet) as they walk in a public square in a manner that strongly recalls the opening scene and "sounds" of THE CONVERSATION. Hackman's character Brill lives in a copper wire cage-like enclosure (he calls it a "jar") that in some shots equally reminds of the earlier Coppola film.
Of course the psychological message of ENEMY OF THE STATE (if there is one) is not as dire as that of the latter. Smith, who is quickly making a career out of playing likeable, innocent protagonists who have to learn to "fight back," is the perfect action hero. Upgraded from the 80s' Rambo prototype, Smith's Dean is still a formulaic "man's man," but along with many recent heroes he is a thinking muscle man, and now also has a decent sense of comic timing. Hackman and Voight do the best they can with their decently fleshed out roles (folks, it's an action movie, after all).
ENEMY OF THE STATE thrives on the pre-millenium anxieties that have produced the recent crop of semi-apocalyptic movies and television shows. But true conspiracy theorists should be warned that for all its paranoia-feeding, writer Marconi is careful to follow conventional generic patterns and restore equilibrium in the finale. Even so, ENEMY OF THE STATE is unlike the horror movie, which fosters the cathartic experience by delegating destructiveness to the supernatural, and therefore the inhuman. In ENEMY, evil is not only progress, but man's ability to destroy himself.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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