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Who's Watching
You? BY BRIAN LIBBY |
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Enemy of the State Rated R Now playing Big Brother is watching--but how closely? If we're to believe Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, who in 1995 wrote a six-part series on surveillance technology for The Baltimore Sun, closely enough that we should be scared. The two journalists stated that the National Security Agency, while "virtually invisible to the American public," runs a spy organization "eclipsing the Central Intelligence Agency in budget and personnel." What is the NSA's purpose? Presumably it's to protect us, but such protection involves unfathomably advanced eavesdropping technology, including "the interception of voice or text messages sent by phone, fax, computer or other means, as well as such nonverbal transmissions as radar and electronic signals from missiles." That was three years ago. What are NSA's capabilities now? According to director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, they're frightening. Moviegoers probably don't expect the makers of Top Gun and Con Air to uncover truths about top-secret government agencies, but viewers may want to give them the benefit of the doubt in the case of Enemy of the State, a film that relies heavily on the Baltimore Sun series. Enemy is clearly influenced by Hitchcock and by paranoia thrillers of the 1970s such as The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece The Conversation. Though not nearly as complex, it is a great film nonetheless. With its intriguing subject matter, talented cast and impressive action sequences, Scott's picture is this year's best political thriller (though admittedly, that isn't saying much). Will Smith plays Robert Clayton Dean, a Washington, D.C., labor lawyer whose married-with-children life is overturned when he becomes entangled in the web of a government cover-up led by the mysterious NSA. A man who pooh-poohs conspiracies, and who at the beginning of the picture writes off his wife's fervent belief that Big Brother wields ominous power, Dean is the last person to think that what eventually befalls him could actually happen. His terror begins when he is innocently shopping for presents in a lingerie store. He runs into Daniel Zavitz (Jason Lee), an old college friend who, unbeknownst to Dean, is being hotly pursued by NSA agents after an important tape. After slipping the evidence into Dean's bag, Zavitz flees and is run over by a bus. Unaware of what he now possesses (evidence of a major political cover-up), Dean becomes the confused prey in a deadly hunt. Using all sorts of insanely frightening techniques, the NSA monitors his every move. Its operatives place tiny surveillance devices in his shoes, watch and clothes, cancel all of his credit cards, monitor every call he makes (even from pay phones), study his bank records and deliver to his wife photos of him lunching with his ex-mistress. (Conveniently for the plot, she throws him out of the house.) They even spray paint his dog green. It is only when Dean stumbles across Brill (Gene Hackman), an underground information broker and ex-intelligence agent, that he starts to comprehend what is happening. The unlikely pair must then put their brains together and attempt to overcome the situation. Of course, as director Scott so ostentatiously displays, Dean and Brill must utilize not just their own brains but the brains of technology as well. Hardware, software and other modern inventions of genius whirl around the picture with such feverish immediacy that one has little time to think about what will happen next. Smith is well-cast as the likeable everyman, and he is allowed to transcend his usual one-dimensional role as humorous sidekick. Throughout the overwhelming action sequences (the best one takes place in a tunnel full of speeding traffic), Smith believably plays a man whose initial freaked-out desperation turns into a mad-as-hell determination that makes him almost superhuman. The picture's smaller parts are also perfectly cast, chiefly in the case of young actors Jack Black (The Cable Guy) and Jamie Kennedy (Scream), who play nerdy NSA computer experts. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gone techie, Black and Kennedy assert the picture's message: It is not men in black who know all the secrets but 20ish dorks who grew up playing Nintendo and Dungeons and Dragons. The tension between them and the elite killers (jockish Top Gun types) is often very funny: The nerds are in control here. Hackman's mysterious Brill is the heart of the picture. With references to The Conversation, in which Hackman also starred as a mysterious surveillance expert, Enemy plays like a high-octane continuation of Coppola's picture. It is not mere coincidence that Brill's work space is almost exactly like that of Hackman's character in The Conversation, or that the only picture of Brill the NSA can find is an old one of him in a white shirt, tie, thick-framed glasses and dour expression--a picture of Hackman from the older film. But while the brilliant Hackman is Enemy's heart, technology is its main character. Many have criticized Scott for relying on flash over character development, but his high-voltage style is appropriate here. His aim is to confront both Dean and the viewer with so much modern technology that we become dizzy from its omniscience and omnipotence. Enemy is shot mostly from the viewpoint of security cameras, motion detectors, satellites and other instruments of surveillance. As we watch the recorded proceedings, it's doubly voyeuristic and doubly creepy. As Brill says, "It's a brave new world out there. At least, it'd better be."
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