Say hi to the FBI.
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
The Pick: Enemy of the State (1998)
By the late 1990s, both Gene Hackman and Will Smith were on a hell of a hot streak. Hackman had just been in bangers like The Birdcage as well as his legendary 1995 triple threat of The Quick and the Dead, Crimson Tide, and Get Shorty, and Will Smith had gone from sitcom star to blockbuster headliner in just 3 years. So, if you’re Jerry Bruckheimer and have a script set to team these two up in a “Lethal Weapon for the digital age” spy thriller and you have Tony Scott’s number? Well, you get a popcorn classic that gives you a bit of nutrition in between the exploding personalities and literal pyrotechnics.
The Team
Ed Travis
Revisiting curated Gene Hackman titles alongside my Cinapse brethren and sistren has been a journey through multiple legitimate masterpieces. This is not that.
BUT, I’m actually not here to talk trash against Enemy Of The State. Far from it. While this may not be a masterpiece, I’m very on record that that designation should be sparse. If everything is a masterpiece, then nothing is. It just happens that Hackman routinely either CHOSE projects that became masterpieces, or he actively MADE them into masterpieces through his performance.
I had loads of thoughts upon this revisit of Enemy Of The State, a film I likely hadn’t revisited since the 1990s. My primary takeaway was that “we really had everything, didn’t we?”. What I mean by that is, in the 1990s, Hollywood was putting out stuff directed by Tony Scott, with massive casts of iconic and talented actors. And even somewhat standard studio output like Enemy was elevated and almost revelatory by today’s standards. Sure, it’s a standard thriller, but it feels so much better than most of Hollywood’s current output.
I was thrilled to revisit this immediately after we covered The Conversation, as it’s now common knowledge that Hackman is unofficially revisiting his Harry Caul character in this film. While that is a fun connection and even seems textual in Enemy, as they show a younger headshot of “Brill” on screen and it’s clearly a still photo of Caul, not much is made of the continuation. Don’t get me wrong, Hackman is as incredible as always in Enemy. But he’s in blockbuster mode, riffing against Will Smith in movie star mode. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer facsimile of Harry Caul. It’s not some probing reassessment of the 1970s film, it’s more like “what if Harry Caul blew some shit up”? And honestly? I’m on board for that.
Lastly I’ll note that Enemy Of The State has long been a placeholder film in my brain as an example of a film showing the State to be all powerful; a tale that justifies conspiratorial thinking. I remember being put off by the premise in the 1990s because the tech was too flashy and the government too incompetent to replicate what’s shown here. Watching a barely-pre-9/11 paranoid thriller today, the tech has actually caught up, and it’s likely that much of the surveillance depicted here CAN be utilized. And the police state has only increased. But competence has not. The will and the tech to oppress us is upon us, and some of the only solace I personally can find is that our leadership’s incompetence at least slows down their push towards the fascism threatened in Enemy Of The State.
Brendan Agnew
How fucked up is it that Enemy of the State has almost become quaint? After being circled by Oliver Stone before reteaming Jerry Bruckheimer with Tony Scott, this was not only Scott’s stress test for the hectic and dizzying directing style that would define his 21st century work, it’s also a movie that portrayed the NSA as so all-powerful and potentially corruptible that the NSA Director at the time initiated a public relations campaign to combat damage to the agency’s image.
In hindsight, that’s both cute and chilling.
As a film on its own, Enemy of the State holds up as a breakneck techno-thriller that plays something like North By Northwest meets The West Wing, with a labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) getting caught up in a murder cover-up that spirals out of control until he’s the NSA’s most wanted man in America. Where the film differentiated itself was the use of (at the time) cutting edge technology being shown to track down, listen in on, and smear the character of “undesirables” deemed either dangerous or inconvenient enough to the wrong agency. It’s a good thing Gene Hackman’s Brill (a clear riff on The Conversation’s Harry Caul) is there to walk Dean through how to keep the feds off his trail and – hopefully – turn the tables and get his life back.
Watching this play out in a world where we carry computers in our pockets that are tracking us everywhere we go was like looking back in time before the water in the pot we’re collectively in started to boil, especially with the hindsight of how much the surveillance state warned about in this film has become an everyday mundanity. There’s not a lot of gray matter between this film’s ears other than “It would suck to not be able to hide, even if you were Will Smith,” but the story of a wrongly-persecuted black man being hunted by John Voight has gained retroactive thematic heft, if nothing else. It’s also still a wonder to watch a seasoned craftsman like Scott command such a massive production even before you start digging through the laundry list of character actor greats that show up here.
But the real reason to watch is to see the volcanic charisma of Smith and Hackman bounce off of each other, and while the film takes its time getting Dean and Brill together, it makes the absolute most of their team-up. Enemy of the State isn’t a modern classic like Unforgiven or even as well-oiled as Crimson Tide, but it’s exactly the sort of high-gloss / high-concept / star-driven blockbuster that we practically took for granted in the ‘90s only to lament not having now.
Justin Harlan
I enjoyed The Conversation far more than I expected to, so I went into Enemy of the State highly optimistic. Turned out to be even more my kind of action thriller than I initially expected. In fact, dare I say that I kinda loved it?
As a film discussed as a somewhat spiritual sequel to The Conversation, I can see why that comparison is drawn. Albeit, I really do wish that they literally just gave Hackman’s character the same name to take those theories up a notch here. Other than that, my only complaint with this one is that I wanted more Hackman on screen, as he’s obviously one of the best of all time… but, also, because he seemed to have stellar on screen chemistry with Will Smith.
The cast is about as late 90s as a cast can get, though the vast majority of the big names in the film are only there for name recognition as far as I can tell. They do a good job, but very few of them are asked to really show their chops. The fact that Scott Caan, Jake Busey, and the other guy who works with them as henchmen types all had the same goofy 90s haircut was pretty stellar.
But I digress, this is primarily a solid Will Smoth vehicle with Hackman as an unexpected mentor and partner; while real life baddie Jon Voight plays the on screen baddie. Voight is solid in his role, but knowing who he’s crone, maybe so much if it wasn’t even scaring… he’s just honestly politically corrupt and shitty.
Alas, keep bringing on the Hackman. It really just never gets old!
Spencer Brickey
In 1998, Tony Scott shot a tight, stylized political paranoia film that seemed to star over half of Hollywood. In only a few short years afterwards, it became clear that he had created one of the most prescient films ever made.
Following a lawyer thrown into a government cover-up, and the grizzled former NSA agent who’s the only man who can save him, Enemy Of The State is pretty standard Tony Scott fare. Which is to say it is genuinely fantastic action filmmaking that blows most of what we get today out of the water. Tony Scott always had one of the best aesthetics as a filmmaker, and Enemy of The State is no different, the entire world almost always shrouded in sunset shadows, colors popping off and reflecting surfaces shining. Scott shoots the hell out of this, be it a insane car chase between moving train cars, or a heated exchange in a hotel elevator.
The cast is also jaw dropping, rivaling True Romance in the “oh wow, they’re in this, too?” department. Beyond just the leads of Smith, Hackman and Voight, you also have (deep breath) Regina King, Lisa Bonet, Barry Pepper, Scott Caan, Jake Busey, Jason Lee, Gabriel Byrnes, Jack Black, Jamie Kennedy, Anna Gunn, Phillip Baker Hall, Seth Green, Jason Robards, and fucking Tom Sizemore. Just an absolute insane ensemble, everyone firing on all cylinders.
Of them all, Hackman is the MVP. Essentially playing Harry Caul from The Conversation (sure, it’s not official, but, come on; Scott even remakes the square recording scene!), Hackman is all ticks and barbs here, his charm hidden beneath layers of accumulated paranoia and apathy. His help comes begrudgingly, and he doesn’t warm easily. One of the highlights of Enemy Of The State is watching Hackman and Smith warm up to each other, Hackman’s charisma coming out the more they work together. It is another outstanding performance in a career of almost only outstanding performances.
Which is why I’ve always been bummed that I never really vibed with what Will Smith is doing here. Playing a role that feels much more attuned to Denzel Washington’s wheelhouse (or, what was very close to actually occurring; Tom Cruise), Smith never really embodies the character to me. He’s classically great whenever the charm or the jokes are needed, but always flounders when he needs to give off an air of seriousness or being off balanced. He has the classic issue that true blue movie stars can have; he’s just too “cool” for this role. This is a role that needed someone who could be vulnerable, and that is the opposite of Smith’s abilities.
What must have felt like far fetched government overreach in 1998 became incredibly real only 3 years after release. After the 9/11 attacks, the chaos and hysteria that gripped the country allowed for the patriot act to be passed, giving the government unparalleled access to the privacy of the American people through surveillance means. 24 years after the attacks, we’ve only become more surveilled, more analyzed, more controlled. When Voight’s villainous NSA deputy director says that “privacy will soon only be in the mind”, I don’t think anyone watching this at release realized we’d be there in only a little over a quarter century.
There’s just one last entry in our Goodbye to a Great series, so join us for one of Wes Anderson’s defining works with The Royal Tenenbaums.
May 19 – The Royal Tenenbaums – (Digital Rental / Purchase – 1 hour 50 minutes)
And We’re Out.
