ENEMY OF THE STATE
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: ** out of ****
The National Security Agency is the branch of the Department of Defense charged with encrypting our nation's secrets and decrypting the secrets of others. They have electronic listening posts across the globe set up to listen in on everything from simple radio waves to hyperencoded satellite burst transmissions. The NSA's acres of computers located underground at Fort Meade, Maryland work twenty-four hours a day to intercept and process information traveling through wires and through the air. Simply put, those who work for the NSA are the premiere eavesdroppers of the world, capable of gathering electronic intelligence with staggering means. But what if this capability were directed internally, at our own citizens? In fact, what if it were used to pursue a personal agenda? It is this question which is the focus of Tony Scott's ENEMY OF THE STATE.
The film begins at a lake shore with a last-minute attempt by NSA Deputy Reynolds (Jon Voight) to convince Congressman Hammersly (Jason Robards), chairman of a key House committee, to pass a bill which would grant the NSA carte blanche in placing any individual under electronic surveillance. Receiving Hammersly's emphatic "no," Reynolds orders the Congressman murdered before he can get back into his car. However, the murder is captured on tape by an unwitting nature photographer. When the photographer later realizes he is holding evidence with tremendous implications, he finds himself hunted by NSA operatives, and in his attempt to flee, stuffs the incriminating recording into the shopping bag of labor attorney Robert Dean (Will Smith). Reynolds and his men soon realize what has transpired and embark on an operation to retrieve the tape, silencing Dean for good if necessary.
Okay, so here's a guy who's going along his merry way, when he's suddenly mixed up in something completely over his head, and he doesn't even know why. Sound familiar? It's the plot for a ton of movies. Come on, think a bit and I'm sure you'll be able to come up with at least a few. So if the film doesn't exactly tow the line for originality, is it too much to expect that other aspects should make up for it? Of course not. Does ENEMY OF THE STATE deliver? Sort of.
This movie is supposed to be one of those thrillers that uses technology as a basis for much of its intrigue and action, but if you want to impress your audience, you usually want to include some really neat stuff. ENEMY OF THE STATE has a lot of neat gizmos, but unfortunately, almost everything used in the film is stuff that doesn't even meet our expectations. A tracking device planted in Dean's shoe? Oh my, what will they think of next? Please, Maxwell Smart had the first cellular phone loaded in his. For original, check out TOTAL RECALL where Schwarzenegger had the tracking device shoved up his nose and didn't even know it. Some Mr. Universe.
Is the ability of the bad guys to follow Dean's every move original? No. I mean, even FAIR GAME with Cindy Crawford used the idea of having a whole bunch of computers and gadgets to track someone, and here's Tony Scott, flashing it in our faces as if he's the first guy who's thought of it. However, even if it's nothing new, it still provides a vehicle for some exhilarating action scenes, the kind that Scott is a pro at - the kind where it's not just a bunch of people running around and shooting at each other, but also constantly talking at the same time. Having some guy at a computer feeding information to a some other guy actually doing the running around adds another dimension to the tired old chases we get with every other action-thriller. Think about nearly silent World War II movie dogfight scenes, versus TOP GUN (which Scott directed) where the air combat included Maverick and Goose feeding each other information. Does it busy up the scene? Maybe. Does it heighten the excitement and the tension? Yes, it does. Am I asking too many questions in this review? What do you think? Huh?
There's a lot of yelling in this movie. As much as it works to further the excitement in an action sequence, it is a severe detriment to the rest of the scenes. It seems as though everyone in the film has to have at least a few shouted lines, and it gets annoying pretty quickly. Perhaps the worst example is an argument that Dean and his wife (Regina King) have over their marriage's stability, where both of them are not just yelling, they're yelling too loudly for the audience to take. I swear, it was louder than some of the explosions that elsewhere punctuate the film. They're angry and frustrated. Okay, we get the point.
Gene Hackman is great (as usual) as Brill, an ex-NSA surveillance specialist who comes to Dean's aid. Unfortunately, he shows up after half the film is already over. Will Smith, who is in the whole film, is simply miscast since we expect him to be his usual wisecracking self, but we instead get a flat performance. He could yell and run all he wanted to, but I never got the picture of a man in danger. Working against Smith is the scripting of his character, which doesn't do much to endear the audience toward him. Dean is a lawyer with an inflated ego and a set of lungs full of hot air. I started to dislike him in his first thirty seconds of screentime. Jon Voight is perfectly cast as the official with an agenda, but the script is flawed with regard to his character as well. We see that Reynolds is not just an evil guy with a plan to grab as much power as he can, but has a wife and a daughter, and lives a life not unlike that of the "hero" of the film. Why screenwriter David Marconi wanted to engender sympathy for the villain is beyond me.
This film also gets points taken off for copious use of what I call the "techno-caption". I'm sure you've seen it before: Instead of a location title (i.e., Washington, D.C.) just appearing at the top or bottom of the screen, the words appear as if being typed very quickly on some futuristic word processor, accompanied by an electronic beep-like sound effect as each letter emerges. It all seems so superfluous.
In all, this film thinks tries to pass itself off as being cleverer than it actually is. The action segments are engaging, and the pace is at some times frenetic, but it's in those other scenes where old concepts are being trotted out as new and innovative that ENEMY OF THE STATE fails. One neat little thing to look for, however: When the NSA pulls up an old file picture of Brill, it's actually a photo of Hackman's character Harry Caul in Francis Coppola's 1974 film THE CONVERSATION, in which Hackman played a guy who made his living conducting surveillance on other people. That, I must say, was pretty cool.
Review posted December 3, 1998
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