ENEMY OF THE STATE

• Starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight and Regina King
• Directed by Tony Scott
• Rated R, with violence and profanity; running time 127 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 8

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Nov. 20, 1998) -- The quick-cut opening montage makes it perfectly clear: If you have ever had a Social Security number, used a telephone or the Internet, bought anything with a credit card, had a highway accident or been arrested, your life is an open book.

In Enemy of the State, Tony Scott's smart, action-packed thriller, a hot-shot young lawyer named Dean finds out how open it is.

As one character says, "Privacy's been dead for 30 years. The only privacy left is the inside of your head."

In classic Hitchcockian style, Dean (Will Smith) is an innocent guy who's about to be thrown into a whirlwind of deadly intrigue.

A panicked young man bumps into him while he's Christmas shopping for his wife. The store's surveillance cameras catch what Dean doesn't notice: The man has dropped something into his shopping bag.

It's a computer card containing video of a murder -- the assassination of a powerful congressman. The representative was murdered on the orders of Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight), a rogue officer in the National Security Agency. And now Reynolds and his supporters want the card back before their plot is exposed.

Reynolds is a key figure in a congressional battle to greatly expand the NSA's scope as America's surveillance masters. The murdered congressman led the opposition.

Now Dean's life becomes a nightmare. His credit cards are terminated, he's discredited by negative stories planted in the media, his phones and house and body are tapped, and his every move is traced by satellites 150 miles above him. Life becomes equally tortured for his wife (Regina King) and family.

His only help comes from a reluctant source, a codger named Brill (Gene Hackman) whom he'd used as an investigator for his law firm. Brill, it seems, is also knowledgable about modern surveillance techniques and clearly has former ties to the NSA.

Though consistently exciting, Enemy of the State really takes off when Dean and Brill pool their resources to combat "Big Brother."

Veteran filmgoers should appreciate Hackman's part -- he offers a clever echo of his role as the surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola's seminal '70s film The Conversation. Brill could very well be Harry Coyle 25 years down the road. (In fact, I wish the film actually made that a fact, instead of merely suggesting it.)

Indeed, Enemy of the State is a '90s updating of The Conversation, so it offers more than the standard blow-'em-up.

The intense, realistic performances by Smith, Hackman and the rest of the ensemble energize the film, along with the carefully constructed screenplay by David Marconi (who reportedly relied on technical advisers and the Baltimore Sun's detailed six-part investigative series in 1995 on the NSA).

Enemy of the State is full of riveting, fast-paced (and fabulously edited) action, though the bad guys get a comeuppance that seems a bit too easy. But, more importantly, the film offers more to discuss on the way home from the movie than how many cars were crashed.

Director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have teamed to create several high-energy box office hits, from Top Gun to Crimson Tide. Enemy of the State, though, is the team's most consistently intelligent and worthwhile thriller.