Enemy of the State
USA 1998
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Washington, DC. National Security Agency man Reynolds has his right-hand man murder a congressman who was threatening to veto a bill that would grant the NSA increased powers. By chance, the murder is recorded on a video set up by environmentalist Daniel Zavitz. Reynolds has his team kill Zavitz, although Zavitz manages to plant the tape on Robert Dean, a lawyer whom he meets accidentally. (Dean is unaware he has the tape). Dean is involved in a case against mobster Pintero, whom he plans to incriminate with another tape supplied by Brill, a shadowy surveillance expert who deals with him through Dean's ex-girlfriend Rachel Banks. Reynolds puts Dean under extreme surveillance, has him fired, puts pressure on his marriage and incriminates him on several charges, including Rachel's murder. While fleeing, Dean makes contact with someone he thinks is Brill but who's really an NSA imposter. He's approached by the real Brill, an ex-NSA agent named Edward Lyle. Brill agrees to help Dean.
Dean discovers the video, which is then ruined in an explosion when Reynolds' men home in on Lyle's hideout. After the pair are seized, Dean dupes Reynolds by saying that Pintero has the video. He takes the NSA crew to the mobster's headquarters which he knows is being watched by the FBI. When Reynolds demands the video from Pintero, the gangster assumes he is after the evidence against him. In a shoot-out, Reynolds, Pintero and most of both gangs are wiped out. Dean's life is restored, and Lyle vanishes again.
Review
Surveillance has been the watchword of the paranoia thriller ever since Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960) introduced the much-imitated figure of the shadowy mastermind who sits before a bank of monitor, eavesdropping on everyone. The assumptions of the genre - that security agencies are entitled to violate everyone's freedoms in the name of democracy - were first seriously questioned in The Prisoner television series. This brand of conspiracy movie became a commonplace in the Watergate era, from The Anderson Tapes (1971) to Three Days of the Condor (1975), in which it was established that the evil government was spying on everyone. Enemy of the State is a definitive late-90s updating of this style of thriller, its plot serving as a demonstration for all manner of high-tech snooping equipment, from bugs sewn into trouser seams to geostationary satellites 150 miles up.
Crimson Tide (1995), the last Tony Scott-Jerry Bruckheimer-Gene Hackman epic before this, was a retooling of The Bedford Incident (1965) with an unimpeachably ethnic but apolitical hero pitted against an establishment psychopath whose personal misdemeanours did not reflect government policy. In this light, it's no surprise that Enemy of the State balances its scares with the get-out clause that its villain is an NSA rogue, explicitly condemned by his superiors. One of the things the crowded script has no time to establish is the extent to which Reynolds' crew know or care that their quarry is actually an innocent man.
As in Crimson Tide (and unlike, say, The Parallax View, 1974) any implied criticism of the system is mitigated by star power. In other words, the film doesn't say it's terrible that unaccountable men have been given power over ordinary people. Instead, it's only wrong to use all these gimmicks when the victim is someone as all-round decent as Will Smith, whose slightly self-satisfied screen persona is ideally suited to the role of a man slowly stripped of his life and identity. Given Smith's dressiness (he sneers when Hackman tries to get him into a Hawaiian shirt), a frisson is generated by divesting him of his classy threads and forcing him to continue his flight in underwear, later pulling on a decidedly proletarian hooded sweatshirt. The fact that all is put right so cleverly marks it out as a 90s movie. The 70s version would end with Smith's Dean shot dead by an anonymous sniper or reduced to living unnoticed on the streets, with Reynolds smiling smugly as the congressional bill granting him unlimited powers is passed.
Aside from Tony Scott's technically brilliant marshalling of the chase scenes, incorporating surveillance images and the comments of the voyeurs into the breathless action, the chief delight of the film is its clever casting. When Gabriel Byrne appears briefly as the fake Brill, the movie seems as if it will turn into a sequel to The End of Violence, where Byrne played a paranoid observer. But Gene Hackman's appearance as the real Brill/Lyle makes it a continuation of The Conversation (it even uses a still from The Conversation for Lyle's NSA file photo). His appearance feels like the cameo Kevin McCarthy made in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) or the guest spots found for original cast members in big-budget remakes of cult television shows. He provides a welcome physical link to what went before but is also shuttled off to one side so Smith can carry the whole thing in an uncomplex 90s way.
Hackman's presence resonates with that of Jon Voight and Jason Robards (also early 70s faces), but the cleverest stroke comes in the casting of Reynolds' team, who are played by Generation X faces, mostly familiar from indie films (Ian Hart, Loren Dean, Barry Pepper and so on) with second-generation hard men (Jake Busey, Scott Caan) as the thick-headed muscle. The gossipy callousness of the crew - they steal Dean's prized blender and use it to whip up fruit drinks while watching Dean run from pillar to post - makes them more amusingly hateful than the assassins who populated 70s movies. It also adds an interesting level of generational conflict between those, like Hackman and Smith, who have earned their expertise and those who have simply been raised on computer games and turned loose on the real world.
Credits
- Producer
- Jerry Bruckheimer
- Screenplay
- David Marconi
- Director of Photography
- Dan Mindel
- Editor
- Chris Lebenzon
- Production Designer
- Benjamin Fernandez
- Music
- Trevor Rabin
- Harry Gregson-Williams
- ©Touchstone Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer, Inc
- Production Companies
- Touchstone Pictures presents a Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production in association with Scott Free Productions
- Executive Producers
- Chad Oman
- James W. Skotchdopole
- Andrew Z. Davis
- Associate Producer
- Pat Sandston
- Production Co-ordinator
- Holly Hagy
- Unit Production Manager
- Eric McLeod
- Location Managers
- Janice Polley
- Washington DC:
- Carol Flaisher
- Post-production Co-ordinator
- Kristin Parker
- Assistant Directors
- Artist Robinson
- Frederic Roth
- Deanna L. Stadler
- Charles Simmers
- Script Supervisor
- Julie Pitkanen
- Script Co-ordinator
- Karin Anderson
- Casting
- Victoria Thomas
- Baltimore:
- Pat Moran
- LA, Associate:
- Kim Coleman
- LA, Additional:
- Aisha Coley
- Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Director of Aerial Photography
- David B. Nowell
- Camera Operators
- Martin Schaer
- P. Scott Sakamoto
- Paul Edwards
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- James E. Price
- Special Visual Effects
- Mill Film Ltd (London)
- Executive Producer:
- Robin Shenfield
- Digital Effects Supervisor/Lead Compositor:
- Tim Burke
- Visual Effects Producer:
- Robin Griffin
- Digital Effects Producer:
- Emma Norton
- Visual Effects Co-ordinator:
- Diana Stulic
- Lead CGI Artists:
- Ben White
- Tim Zaccheo
- CGI Artists:
- Kevin Modeste
- Chris Shaw
- Digital Compositor:
- Hani Alyousif
- Visual Effects Editor:
- John Seymour
Visual Effects Director of Photography:- John Mathieson
- Motion Control Cameraman:
- Malcolm Wooldridge
- Digital Visual Effects
- Digiscope
- Executive Producer:
- Mary Stuart-Welch
- Digital Effects Supervisor:
- Dion Hatch
- Digital Effects Producer:
- Laurel Lyn Schulman
- Lead Digital Artist:
- Todd Mesher
- Digital Artists:
- Grady Cofer
- Naomi Sato
- Lawrence Carroll
- Brennan Prevatt
- Rob Blue
- Marty Taylor
- Mechanic Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- Mike Meinardus
- Set Foreman:
- David Fletcher
- Powder Foreman:
- Anthony Simonaitis
- Foreman:
- Robert S. Henderson
- Technicians:
- Morgan Guynes
- Chris Brenczewski
- Pat Huggins
- Steven B. Wolke
- Structural Effects Implosion
- Controlled Demolition Incorporated
- Miniatures
- Asylum Models & Effects Ltd
- Graphic Designer
- Jason Sweers
- Digital Graphics Supervisor
- Chris B. Holt
- Research/Video Co-ordinator
- Vanessa Kirby Bendetti
- Computer Graphics
- Blackbox Digital Inc
- Associate Editors
- Joel Negrõn
- David Dresher
- Art Directors
- James J. Murakami
- Jennifer A. Davis
- Donald B. Woodruff
- Set Designers
- Lead:
- Peter J. Kelly
- Baltimore:
- Andrew Menzies
- Set Decorator
- Garrett Lewis
- Costume Designer
- Marlene Stewart
- Costume Supervisor
- Christopher B. Lawrence
- Key Make-up Artist
- Ellen Wong
- Make-up Artists
- Francisco X. Perez
- Make-up Effects
- Kevin Yagher Productions, Inc
- Hairstylists
- Danny Valencia
- Main Title Design
- Garson Yu
- uY + Co
- Titles
- Title House
- Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Optical Supervisor
- Ladd Lanford
- Additional Music
- Tim Heintz
- Orchestra Conductor
- Gordon Goodwin
Orchestrations- Bruce Fowler
- Gordon Goodwin
- Executive in Charge of Music for Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
- Kathy Nelson
- Score Co-ordinator
- Paul Linford
- Music Editor
- Bob Badami
- Music Programmers
- Paul Linford
- Steve Jablonski
- Score Recordist/Mixer
- Steve Kempster
- Additional Music Recorder
- Rick Norman
- Soundtrack
- "O Come All Ye Faithful" by Margaret Dorn, Linda Lawley, Danny Pelfrey, performed by The Accidentals; "Good King Wenceslas" arranged by Dick Walter; "Trigger Hippie" by Paul Godfrey, Ross Godfrey, Skye Edwards, performed by Morcheeba; "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", "The Twelve Days of Christmas" arranged by Richard Harvey; "Guilty" by Lennox Brown; "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" by Johnny Marks, performed by Jive Bunny
- Sound Design
- Christopher Boyes
- Shannon Mills
- Tom Myers
- Sound Mixer
- Bill Kaplan
- Stage Engineers
- John Banuelos
- Mike Kaufman
- Field Recording
- John Fasal
- Re-recording Sound Mixers
- Kevin O'Connell
- Greg P. Russell
- Re-recordists
- Dan Sharp
- Grant Schmitz
- Supervising Sound Editor
- George Watters II
- Sound Editors
- F. Hudson Miller
- R.J. Palmer
- Suhail Kafity
- Gary Wright
- Adam Kopald
- Ed Callahan
- David Arnold
- Supervising Dialogue Editor
- Teri E. Dorman
- Dialogue Editors
- Gloria D'Alessandro
- Kimberly Lambert
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Rick Canelli
- Mixer:
- Thomas J. O'Connell
- Supervising Editor:
- Fred Stafford
- Editors:
- Nick Korda
- Andrea Horta
- Foley
- Artists:
- Dan O'Connell
- John Cucci
- Recordist:
- Linda Lew
- Mixer:
- James Ashwill
- Supervising Editor:
- Pamela Bentkowski
- Editors:
- James Likowski
- Christine Danelski
- Fred Burke
- Valerie Davidson
- Location Consultant
- Marshall Vernet
- Technical Advisers
- Larry Cox
- Harry Humphries
- Martin Kaiser
- Anthony Pellicano
- Steve Uhrig
- Chase Brandon
- Technical Consultant
- Don Ferrarone
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Charles Picerni Jr
- Animal Wranglers
- Studio Animal Services
- Aerial Co-ordinator/Helicopter Pilot
- Alan Purwin
- Helicopter Pilots
- Dirk Vahle
- Rick Shuster
- Cast
- Will Smith
- Robert Clayton Dean, 'Bobby'
- Gene Hackman
- Edward Lyle, 'Brill'
- Jon Voight
- Thomas Brian Reynolds
- Regina King
- Carla Dean
- Loren Dean
- Agent Hicks
- Jake Busey
- Krug
- Barry Pepper
- Agent David Pratt
- Jason Lee
- Daniel Leon Zavitz
- Gabriel Byrne
- NSA agent, 'Brill'
- Jack Black
- Fiedler
- Jamie Kennedy
- Jamie
- Scott Caan
- Jones
- Lisa Bonet
- Rachel Banks
- Stuart Wilson
- Congressman Sam Albert
- Laura Cayouette
- Christa Hawkins
- Ian Hart
- NSA Agent Bingham
- James Le Gros
- Jerry Miller
- Dan Butler
- Shaffer
- Bodhi Pine Elfman
- Van
- Jacob Chambers
- Davis
- Alexandra Balahoutis
- Martha
- Anna Gunn
- Emily Reynolds
- Jascha Washington
- Eric Dean
- Rebecca Silva
- Marie, the Clayton's nanny
- Bobby Borriello
- Dylan, Eric's friend
- Carl Mergenthaler
- Mike, law firm
- Mattias Kraemer
- gas station cashier
- Lillo Brancato
- young worker
- John Capodice
- older worker 1
- Vic Manni
- Vic, old mobster
- T.R. Richards
- cook
- Ivana Milavich
- Ruby's sales clerk
- Patsy Grady Abrams
- accident bystander
- Beatriz Mayoral
- Reynolds' nanny
- Kasey Lynn Quinn
- Reynolds' daughter
- Elizabeth Berman
- Ruthie
- Donna Scott
- Jenny
- Allison Sie
- hotel desk clerk
- Mike Andolini
- Sal
- Arthur Nascarella
- Frankie
- Grant Heslov
- Lenny
- John Cenatiempo
- young mobster 1
- Joyce Flick Wendl
- waitress
- Frank Medrano
- bartender
- Dennis S. Fahey
- cop with ambulance
- Albert Wong
- Mr Wu
- Christopher B. Lawrence
- paramedic
- John Haynes Walker
- Joe Patrick Kelly
- firemen
- Lennox Brown
- tunnel maintenance worker
- Martin Bosworth
- bike messenger
- Nancy Yee
- Mrs Wu
- Troy Anthony Cephers
- ANA hotel security
- Carlos Gomez
- Robert Gersicoff
- Arnie Alpert
- FBI agents
- Greg Collins
- FBI supervisor
- Doug Roberts
- hijacked car driver
- Larry King
- himself
- Warren Olney
- Penny Griego
- TV anchors
- Rhonda Overby
- field reporter 1
- Eric Keung
- David Han
- Mambo Kitchen workers
- Mandy Kriss
- Noel Werking
- Sam De Crispino
- reporters
- Wayne A. Larrivey
- doorman
- Mandy Kriss
- Lillie Shaw Hamer
- Brenna McDonough
- field reporters
- Callison Slater
- Colin Brodie
- children
- Daniel Cano
- hallway lawyer
- Joy Ehrlich
- mom in diner
- Eric Olson
- Thomas Troy
- Adam Karkowsky
- aides
- Steve Uhrig
- electronic store employee
- Robyn Killian
- Laura Eizenia aka Johnson
- Angelica Pamintuan
- Vené Arcoraci
- Charlie Curtis
- models
- Raichle Watt
- Becky
- Michael J. Walker
- union official
- Jackilynn Ward
- Pintero's sister
- Jason Welch
- Joshua Ward
- Pintero kids
- Pete Sutton
- cop at Dean house
- Thomas M. Quinn
- tunnel technician
- Robert O'Rourke
- John Allendorfer
- Henry Sandler
- FBI observers
- Chris Holt
- himself
- [uncredited]
- Jason Robards
- Rep. Philip Hamersly
- Seth Green
- Seth
- Philip Baker Hall
- Brian Silverberg
- Brian Markinson
- Mark Blake
- Tom Sizemore
- Pintero
- Betsy Brantley
- FBI agent 1
- Paul Herman
- Paulie, young mobster 2
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 11,881 feet
- 132 minutes
- Dolby digital/SDDS/Digital DTS sound
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor
- Anamorphic [Panavision]