Now that X-Files has apparently become a quirky romantic comedy, sort of like an alien-network executive hybrid of the first season of "Friends" and "Twilight Zone" (e.g., "in a very special episode, because of lost time, Mulder forgets Scully's birthday..."), we have to go elsewhere to get our grand conspiracy-paranoia fix. Conveniently, I was on a quest to see the Star Wars preview, and "Enemy of the State" just seemed like the right kind of movie to have "Every Saga Has a Beginning..." pop up beforehand. Sadly, that particular movie theater insisted on putting the premiere with the Brad Pitt-as-Deadhead movie instead of making my life more convenient. Sadly, too, the paranoia fix just wasn't there: low-grade stuff, not worthy of the better conspiracy movies.
Comparisons between "Enemy of the State" and the superb Coppola film, "The Conversation" are inevitable. Both feature Gene Hackman as a professional eavesdropper, both indulge in hidden cameras and listening through tiny microphones as their central activity. The new movie pays homage to its predecessor in its spy-on-people-in-park sequence, for that matter.
But the older film maintains a dark, forbidding atmosphere throughout. There's a sense of dread. It was released around the time of Watergate, after all. This new film has plenty of adrenaline scenes, stunts that couldn't easily be staged in the 1970s, wild chases that arguably should have made the evening news but somehow didn't. It's neat eye candy, but, beyond a few tossed off platitudes about watching the watchers and all that, there's nothing there but stage smoke and flashing lights. One almost thinks this was deliberate. In "The Conversation" there's one last bit surveillance, one nasty, creepy episode of eavesdropping at the end. There's also a final flourish of watching at the end of "Enemy", but it's a happy, jokey scene: Gene Hackman is sending Will Smith his vacation pictures. Will Smith is not in the least freaked out by this intrusion. I suppose that if friends are watching you then it's really no problem at all.
Feelings of grand conspiracy are also notably absent in "Enemy". The bad guys are a rogue unit of the NSA, led by someone with a grudge because he wasn't promoted to Deputy Secretary of Spy Satellites And Men's Room Stalls, or something. On the whole, the NSA doesn't come off as evil, just misguided in an office or two: there's even a scene where the NSA chief makes a point of law regarding his agencies activities, and invoking a threat of prison time for people who might have done bad things. The apparatus, in this case, isn't evil; there are merely evil men. Quite clearly, we're no longer in the age of Watergate, despite the current impeachment hubbub.
I think there's one other free floating film reference in "Enemy", this time to the disappointing Wim Wenders's state surveillance film, "The End of Violence". Well, maybe, but that's how I thought of Gabriel Byrne's cameo.
At least in the Wim Wenders's, the act of surveillance is supposed to have a distancing, depersonalizing quality. All the computer screens allow you to watch the world but not be a part of it. In "Enemy", the film makers indulge in the late 1990s ops center fetish, where flashing screens, militarily precise orders and commando tactics have a certain testosterone-heavy flourish. The implied attractiveness of this sort of world undermines whatever pretense the film might have about eavesdropping being a wrong thing.
A few random notes, to close things out. I find it interesting that the vast surveillance apparatus portrayed in the movie can't be used to, say, find Scud missiles in the Iraqi desert. Certainly, a Scud is somewhat larger than Will Smith. Maybe they've been able to exploit more of that alien technology they have over in Area 51. I only offer that as a possibility. As someone who works with computers all day, I have to note that many of the computer screens portrayed in this movie had typical Hollywood user interfaces: lots of cool looking data scrolling by, little of it useful, all of it capable of producing mongo eye strain. Surely, the NSA must have a good vision care program. Much of the surveillance footage in the opening credits, I think, has appeared in various Fox specials, "When 7-11 Clerks Attack", or something similar. One may note that much of this surveillance is courtesy of private entities, ranging from your local bank's ATM booth to the usual 7-11 security cam, up to the almost ubiquitous Los Angeles area news chopper. Little of that footage was from government entities. Yes, the people who put the credits together wanted to send us a message about surveillance being pervasive in our society. Well, maybe that's what they wanted to say.
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