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Enemy of the State
**
Cinema
Releases - December 26,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Tony Scott. Written by David Marconi. Starring Will
Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, Regina King, Loren Dean, Jason
Lee, Jason Robards.
Tony Scott's "Enemy of the State"
is a thriller that didn't thrill me, with heroes I didn't care about, villains
I didn't believe and a plot I could not follow. It doesn't even work as
brainless, skin-deep entertainment: Scott, as well as his producer, Jerry
Bruckheimer, may usually make films that are slick and easy to watch, but
this one is incredibly dull.
Will Smith is the lead, as young Washington D.C.
lawyer Robert Dean, who has a beautiful wife, Carla (Regina King), a nice
kid, a big house, and a great blender. He loves that blender. While Christmas
shopping, he runs into an old college buddy, Daniel Zavitz (Jason Lee), who
is frantic, and seems to be being chased. After a quick plea for help, Zavitz
runs out into the street, and before Dean knows it, the National Security
Agency is after him.
Why? Dean honestly doesn't know, although it
transpires that Zavitz sneakily passed him a video tape showing NSA big-wig
Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight) murdering a congressman who was believed to
have died of a heart attack. By the time Dean knows he has this tape, the
NSA have already turned his life upside down because of fear that he will
go public with it -- getting him disgraced, getting him fired, and getting
him implicated in the murder of his ex-mistress (Lisa Bonet). So, with the
help of an NSA defector, the angry and profane Mr. Brill (Gene Hackman),
Dean goes about trying to stay alive and come out on top of his
situation.
The length of time it takes to get to this point
is excessive, and the film keeps going back and forth to repeat itself, losing
balance and ending up with a squiggle for a story rather than an arc. Even
when it does get to this point, it's confusing, and ends in a bizarrely
inappropriate bloodbath which resolves things nonsensically.
Many of the positive reviews of "Enemy of the
State" have claimed that it is a pulse-pounding adventure which also has
serious things to say about how far surveillance has gone. It's been described
as an eye-opener. What a joke. In this day and age, I think we pretty much
know that the NSA can spy on anybody they want to, in any way they want to.
We know that governments have people killed, and that government agents cover
things up. The film does not teach us anything, and does not even create
any real feelings of tension, worry or frustration, unlike "The Truman Show"
or "The Conversation".
The latter film also starred Gene Hackman, and
has obviously inspired a lot of "Enemy of the State". Images and set-ups
are taken from the film, most noticeably the hideout of the Hackman character.
But that film's claustrophobia and sense of danger came from elements of
the story and characters. "Enemy of the State" simply has unbalanced, crowded
images and sets. That's an attempt at trickery, it's off-putting, and it
doesn't work.
The presence of the cast is sizzling. How could
it not be, with Will Smith, Jon Voight, Gene Hackman and Regina King in leading
roles? Too bad that there wasn't good material for them to work with. The
one fantastic thing this movie offers is a fine array of gadgets. We can
imagine how far the NSA can go, and what technology they can develop, but
seeing it is quite different, and quite spectacular. But the contraptions
become less and less impressive when one considers that "Enemy of the State"
had a budget of ninety million dollars, and that props alone cannot breathe
life into a film which is otherwise boring and muddled. For the producer
of "American Gigolo", "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Top Gun", and the director
of "The Last Boy Scout", "True Romance" and "Crimson Tide", this is a
disappointment.
COPYRIGHT©
1998 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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