Enemy of the State (1998)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Tony Scott

Writer (WGA):

David Marconi (written by)

Release Date:

20 November 1998 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

It's not paranoia if they're really after you.

Plot:

A lawyer becomes a target by a corrupt politician and his NSA goons when he accidentally receives key evidence to a serious politically motivated crime.

Plot Keywords:

NSA | Murder | Evidence | Surveillance | Washington D.C.

Awards:

5 wins & 12 nominations

Cast

Will Smith	...	Robert Clayton Dean
Gene Hackman	...	Edward Lyle, 'Brill'
Jon Voight	...	Reynolds
Lisa Bonet	...	Rachel Banks
Regina King	...	Carla Dean
Stuart Wilson	...	Congressman Albert
Laura Cayouette	...	Christa Hawkins
Loren Dean	...	Hicks
Barry Pepper	...	Pratt
Ian Hart	...	Bingham
Jake Busey	...	Krug
Scott Caan	...	Jones
Jason Lee	...	Zavitz
Gabriel Byrne	...	NSA agent, 'Brill'
James LeGros	...	Jerry Miller (as James Le Gros)

MPAA:

Rated R for language and violence.

Runtime:

132 min | USA:140 min (extended version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #36342) | Iceland:14 (original rating) | Iceland:16 (video rating) | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba) | Canada:14A (Ontario) (video rating) | South Korea:15 | Canada:AA (Ontario) (original rating) | Argentina:13 | Netherlands:12 (re-rating) | Netherlands:16 (video rating) | Philippines:PG-13 | New Zealand:M | Brazil:14 | Australia:M | Finland:K-12 | France:U | Germany:12 (w) | Hong Kong:IIB | Italy:T | Norway:15 | Portugal:M/12 | Singapore:NC-16 | Spain:13 | Sweden:11 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Company:

Touchstone Pictures

Trivia:

Gabriel Byrne's character looks and dresses exactly like Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro's character in Taxi Driver (1976). He also drives Dean away in a taxi.

Goofs:

Factual errors: When Brill hijacks the car under the bridge, the car is an E-class Mercedes, with obvious power windows in both front and back seats. However, you can clearly see when Brill tells Dean that he is hypoglycemic, the manual device for the window. That's impossible in an E-class Mercedes.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Congressman Phillip Hammersley: Come on. Come on, mutt. Now, look at that ball. All right. Come on, get that ball. Ah!

Movie Connections:

References Pocahontas (1995)

Soundtrack:

O Come All Ye Faithful

Can you imagine not having any privacy at all?

Will Smith plays Robert Dean, a successful Washington, D.C. attorney who is passed a tape by an old friend (Jason Lee) on the run; it turns out that the tape secretly recorded a politically motivated murder and now the psychos who committed the crime start methodically ruining Dean's life in an effort to discredit him should he come forward with the evidence. Dean is ultimately forced to team up with Brill (Gene Hackman), a lone-wolf operative who's helped him with some of his cases in the past.

I love this movie, for one main reason: Once it gets going, it moves a mile a minute, with truly breathtaking chase scenes. It's reasonably intelligent, well-cast (and well-acted, needless to say), and the central dilemma of the film - the complete invasion of our privacy by the government jerks who are supposed to be protecting us - is too scary to ignore.

Try it and see if you like it!

It's a long movie, but it was made by skilled veterans who know how to create big-budget thrills and therefore doesn't seem as long as it is.

10/10