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WILL
SMITH
Enemy of the State is a 1998 American political action thriller film directed by Tony Scott, written by David Marconi, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman with an ensemble supporting cast consisting of Jon Voight, Regina King, Loren Dean, Jake Busey, Barry Pepper and Gabriel Byrne. In the film, a lawyer is targeted by a group of corrupt National Security Agency (NSA) agents after he unknowingly receives a tape of the agents murdering a congressman.
Enemy of the State was released on November 20, 1998, by Buena Vista Pictures through its
Touchstone Pictures label. The film grossed $250.8 million worldwide, and received generally positive reviews from film critics, with many praising the writing and direction as well as the chemistry between Smith and Hackman.
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PLOT
Senior NSA Assistant Director Thomas Reynolds meets in a public park with Congressman Phil Hammersley to discuss a new piece of counterterrorism legislation that would dramatically expand the surveillance powers of American intelligence agencies. Hammersley remains committed to blocking its passage, arguing that the potential benefits of the bill are not worth sacrificing the privacy rights of ordinary citizens for. Reynolds, wanting the bill passed to obtain a long-delayed promotion, has agents loyal to him murder Hammersley and stage his death as a car accident following a heart attack.
Labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean works on a case involving restaurant owner and mob boss Paulie Pintero. Dean meets with his ex-girlfriend, Rachel Banks; Rachel works for "Brill", a man Dean occasionally hires to conduct surveillance operations but has never met in person. She delivers a tape incriminating Pintero for labor racketeering, with which Dean threatens him to ensure the mobster agrees to a favorable settlement.
Reynolds and his team spot biologist Daniel Zavitz swapping out a tape from a remote wildlife camera stationed across the lake from the murder scene. After viewing footage of the murder, Zavitz contacts a journalist to publicize the tape. Reynolds' team intercepts the call and rush to Zavitz's apartment. Zavitz transfers the video to a disc and hides it in an NEC TurboExpress game console before fleeing. He bumps into Dean, his old college friend. Panicked, Zavitz slips the disc into Dean's shopping bag without his knowledge. He runs into the path of an oncoming fire truck and dies, while Reynolds has the journalist murdered.
Looking for the disc, Reynolds' team identify Dean and visit him disguised as cops. When Dean refuses to let them search his belongings without a warrant, the agents erroneously believe that he is knowingly withholding the disc. They break into Dean's house while he and his family are out and plant bugs in his clothes and personal effects. They also disseminate false evidence that Dean is laundering money through his firm for Pintero and having an affair with Rachel. The subterfuge destroys Dean's life: he is fired from his law firm, his bank accounts are frozen pending a federal investigation, and his wife, Carla, throws him out. Dean asks Rachel to contact Brill for help. Reynolds intercepts the call and sends someone to impersonate Brill. The real Brill rescues Dean and warns him that the NSA is responsible for ruining his life. Dean later finds Rachel shot dead in her home.
Dean finds the disc and shows it to Brill, who identifies Reynolds. The NSA agents raid Brill's hideout; Brill and Dean escape but the disc is destroyed in a car fire. Brill is actually Edward Lyle, a former
NSA communications expert stationed in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. His partner, Rachel's father, was killed, but Lyle escaped and has been working covertly ever since, employing Rachel as a courier to watch over her. Lyle urges Dean to start a new life, but he insists on clearing his name. Dean and Lyle trail Congressman Sam Albert, a key supporter of the bill, and record a videotape of him with his mistress. Dean and Lyle hide an NSA listening device in Albert's hotel room, knowing that he will find it. Lyle then hacks into Reynolds' personal bank account and deposits money to make it look like he is being paid to blackmail Albert.
A meeting is arranged with Reynolds to exchange the video so he can be tricked into incriminating himself. Reynolds' men instead ambush the meeting and hold Lyle and Dean at gunpoint, demanding the tape. Dean, anticipating this, lies, saying that the evidence is hidden at Pintero's restaurant, which is under
FBI surveillance. He then tricks Pintero and Reynolds into believing that the other man has the tape. The encounter escalates into a firefight when a gangster shoots an NSA agent in the back; Pintero, his men, Reynolds, and almost all of his agents are killed. Meanwhile, Lyle sends the FBI a live feed of the incident to trigger a raid on the restaurant before escaping in disguise. Dean is rescued, the survivors are arrested, and the conspiracy is exposed.
To avoid scandal Congress abandons the bill, while the NSA executes a cover-up of Reynolds' actions. Dean is cleared of all charges and reconciles with Carla. Lyle sends Dean a "farewell" message via his TV, showing himself relaxing on a tropical island with his cat.
CAST
- Will Smith as Robert Clayton Dean
- Gene Hackman as Edward "Brill" Lyle
- Jon Voight as NSA Assistant Director Thomas Brian Reynolds
- Regina King as Carla Dean
- Loren Dean as NSA Agent Loren Hicks, Reynolds' aide-de-camp
- Jake Busey as Krug, a USMC veteran and NSA field operative
- Barry Pepper as NSA Agent David Pratt
- Jason Lee as Daniel Leon Zavitz
- Gabriel Byrne as the Brill imposter who tries to kidnap Dean
- Lisa Bonet as Rachel Banks
- Jack Black as NSA Agent Fiedler, a surveillance analyst
- Jamie Kennedy as NSA Agent Jamie Williams
- Scott Caan as Jones, Hicks' partner
- James LeGros as Jerry Miller, managing partner of Dean's firm
- Stuart Wilson as Congressman Sam Albert
- Ian Hart as NSA Agent John Bingham
- Jascha Washington as Eric Dean
- Anna Gunn as Emily Reynolds
- Grant Heslov as Lenny Bloom
- Bodhi Elfman as NSA Agent Van
- Dan Butler as NSA Director Admiral Shaffer
- Jason Robards as Congressman Philip Hammersley (uncredited)
- John Capodice as Old Worker #1
- Seth Green as NSA Agent Selby (uncredited)
- Tom Sizemore as Paulie Pintero (uncredited)
- Philip Baker Hall as Mark Silverberg (uncredited)
- Brian Markinson as Brian Blake (uncredited)
- Larry King as Himself
PRODUCTION
The story is set in both Washington,
D.C., and Baltimore, and most of the filming was done in Baltimore. Location shooting began on a ferry in Fell's Point. In mid-January, the company moved to
Los Angeles to complete production in April 1998. David Marconi spent over 2 1/2 years developing his original script at Don
Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films under the direction of Lucas Foster, their development executive at the time. Oliver Stone expressed early interest in directing Marconi's script, but ultimately Jerry Bruckheimer went with Tony Scott who he had a long standing relationship with because of their previous collaborations. The writers Aaron
Sorkin, Henry Bean and Tony Gilroy each performed an uncredited rewrite of the script.
Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise were considered for the part that went to Will Smith, who took the role largely because he wanted to work with Gene
Hackman, and had previously enjoyed working with the producer Jerry Bruckheimer on Bad Boys. George Clooney was also considered for a role in the film. Sean Connery was considered for the role that went to
Hackman. The film is notable for having cast several soon-to-be stars in smaller supporting roles, which casting director Victoria Thomas credited to people's interest in working with Gene
Hackman.
The film's crew included a technical surveillance counter-measures consultant who also had a minor role as a spy shop merchant. Hackman had previously acted in a similar thriller about spying and surveillance, The Conversation (1974). The photo in Edward Lyle's NSA file is of Hackman in The Conversation.
BOX OFFICE AND CRITICS
Enemy of the State grossed $111.5 million in the United States
and $139.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $250.8 million, against a production budget of $90 million.
The film opened at #2, behind The Rugrats Movie, grossing $20 million over its first weekend at 2,393 theaters, averaging $8,374 per venue. It made $18.1 million in its second weekend and $9.7 million in its third, finishing third place both times.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Enemy of the State holds an approval rating of 70% based on 84 reviews, with an average rating of 6.44/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "An entertaining, topical thriller that finds director Tony Scott on solid form and Will Smith confirming his action headliner status." Metacritic assigned the film a normalized score of 67 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A− on an A+ to F scale.
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times expressed enjoyment in the movie, noting how its "pizazz [overcame] occasional lapses in moment-to-moment plausibility". Janet Maslin of The
New York Times approved of the film's action-packed sequences, but cited how it was similar in manner to the rest of the members of "Simpson's and Bruckheimer's school of empty but sensation-packed filming. In a combination of the two's views, Edvins Beitiks of the San Francisco Examiner praised many of the movie's development aspects, but criticized the overall concept that drove the film from the
beginning - the efficiency of government intelligence - as unrealistic. Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times felt "the climax edges perilously close to the ridiculous" but overall enjoyed the film, particularly Voight and Hackman's performances.
Kim Newman considered Enemy of the State a "continuation of The Conversation", the 1974 psychological thriller that starred Hackman as a paranoid, isolated surveillance expert.
REAL LIFE
In June 2013, the NSA's PRISM and Boundless Informant programs for domestic and international surveillance were uncovered by The Guardian and
The Washington Post as the result of information provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. This information revealed capabilities such as collection of Internet browsing, e-mail and telephone data of not only many Americans, but citizens of other nations as well.
The
Guardian's John Patterson argued that Hollywood depictions of NSA surveillance, including Enemy of the State and Echelon Conspiracy, had "softened" up the American public to "the notion that our spending habits, our location, our every movement and conversation, are visible to others whose motives we cannot know".
REFERENCE
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