Waste of time

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Enemy Of The StateThe vulnerability and the intense drama sequences are score on high pitches that speaks to the audience where even its amazing background score too factors in. David Marconi's screenplay is the real gem that bridges between the fiction and practicality in here. The execution by the director Tony Scott fails to justify the script where neither d.o.p. nor editing works on its favor. Will Smith is genuinely good in his portrayal and is supported with a great cast like Jon Voight and Gene Hackman. Enemy Of The State lacks a fresh concept or perspective, but the gripping screenplay and stellar performance is enough to hold the audience for its more than 2 hours of runtime.

I am unabashedly a Will Smith fan (After all, he is my Philly homeboy). This movie is one of his best, and if you don't believe Big Brother is watching your every move, then you have your head in the sand. Great commentary on government surveillance and its intrusion into our personal privacy.

It's hard to believe that this film is eighteen years old! While technology has moved on a tad, paranoia of being watched & listened to by the government is still just as prevalent as it was then.In this conspiracy thriller Will Smith plays a high flying lawyer who unwittingly becomes the recipient of a tape which documents the murder of a politician by some FBI members.What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase - the kind of story that we've seen many a time before. Smith teams up with ex spook Gene Hackman and tries to turn the tables on his pursuers.Some of the dialogue, particularly in the first quarter of the film, is a little on the nose - I'd gone into this expecting an intelligent thriller (which I guess it is in many ways) and this put me off a bit. But I prevailed, and things seemed to get better. There's a good ensemble cast when it comes to the bad guys - Jon Voight, Seth Green, Jack Black, the sniper from Saving Private Ryan and Ace from Starship Troopers! However, as nice as it was to see these actors on screen, they interacted like juveniles at times, and while I'm no Andy McNab, I can't imagine that covert operatives would talk like fratboys pulling an all-nighter in the library the night before an essay is due in.Also, when they chase a witness to the murder near the start of the film they are unbelievably blatant about it and cause havoc across a big city. How their faces didn't end up on the news or at least spotted by a lot of the general public I do not know. This scene should have been so much slicker - there are about six of them and they can't catch a guy on a bicycle! As sheer luck (for them) would have it he ends up being squashed by a fire engine.Hackman is good in this, although when he met up with Smith I was worried it might turn into one of those tired-out 'mismatched duo on the run' films - but the interplay between the two was good, a personal highlight for me.There's a good use of aerial shots here, which adds to that whole 'everyone is watching you' feel - and for me worked very well.I also wasn't keen on the way Smith's wife was portrayed, she's supposed to be a barrister (or so I thought) but behaves like a grumpy teenage girl and is more worried about the underwear he bought her for Christmas than the fact his life is in danger. All in all, this whirrs along at a nice pace and keeps you going until the end - but, ultimately it's nothing we haven't seen before and suffers from poor dialogue in patches.

Tony Scott's Enemy Of The State is a sensationally kinetic, hyperactive espionage whizbanger that doesn't let up for a goddamned second. It's classic Scott, all edgy, blurred lines filmmaking with a relentless pace, eclectic cast and excessive amounts of unique style to go around. It's the precursor to his purely distilled style which can be found in Man On Fire, Domino and Deja Vu, with leftover residue from his 90's action aesthetic, observable in True Romance, Last Boy Scout etc. When an obstinate US Senator (Jason Robards) refuses to go along with a new bill being pushed through that allows the NSA full access to any citizens private phone calls, emails and communications via state of the art, scary technology (even by 2001's standards), he's discreetly dispatched by a letcherous, sociopathic NSA honcho (Jon Voight playing coldly ruthless to a T). Only problem is, a nature photographer (Jason Lee) accidentally gets footage of the murder. It gets passed off to hotshot lawyer Robert Dean (Will Smith) via circumstance, and from there the chase is on. It's a wicked chase too, one that doesn't let up for its entire two plus hour heart pumping runtime, with no moments to breathe whatsoever. Gene Hackman quasi reprises his role from Coppola's The Conversation as Brill, a crusty, high strung ex NSA agent who's gone rogue and paying dearly for it, as he assists Dean in his quest to bring down the corrupt agency. The film is somewhat ahead of its time, outlining invasions of privacy and corruption that seems tame by today's real life scandals. As thrillers go it's a gem, jumping from one explosive escape to the next, never sacrificing character as it hurtles along. Hackman's grumpy jadedness is a perfect companion to Smith's incredulous everyman, making a dynamic worth following. Voight makes a terrific villain as well, really amping up his scenes with a sick self justification. There's a jaw dropping supporting cast well. Jake Busey, Ian Hart, Jack Black, Seth Green, Gabriel Byrne, Loren Dean and Barry Peoper all show up as various NSA rats. Lisa Bonet, Regina King and Ivana Milicevic are awesome, and Arthur Nascarella and Tom Sizemore have nice bits as hammy mobsters. In the tradition of 24 and The Bourme Identity, it's a loud, chaotic blast of a thriller and one of Scott's best works.