Enemy of the State (film)

Enemy of the State
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tony Scott
Produced by	Jerry Bruckheimer
Written by	David Marconi
Starring	Will Smith Gene Hackman Jon Voight Lisa Bonet Regina King Jack Black
Music by	Harry Gregson-Williams[1]
Distributed by	Buena Vista
Release date(s)	United States: 20 November 1998 United Kingdom: 26 December 1998 Australia: 7 January 1999
Running time	131 min
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$90,000,000[2]
Gross revenue	US$250,649,836[2]

Enemy of the State is a 1998 spy film about a group of rogue NSA agents who kill a Congressman in a political-related murder, and then try to cover up the murder by destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses. It was written by David Marconi, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and directed by Tony Scott. The film stars Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet and Regina King. It grossed over $250,000,000 USD worldwide ($111,549,836 domestically).

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot 3 Production 4 Reception 4.1 Box office 5 Notes 6 See also

Cast

Actor	Role
Will Smith	Robert Clayton Dean
Gene Hackman	Edward 'Brill' Lyle
Barry Pepper	David Pratt
Jon Voight	Thomas Brian Reynolds
Regina King	Carla Dean
Ian Hart	John Bingham
Lisa Bonet	Rachel F. Banks
Jascha Washington	Eric Dean
James LeGros	Jerry Miller
Jake Busey	Krug
Scott Caan	Jones
Jamie Kennedy	Jamie Williams
Jason Lee	Daniel Leon Zavitz
Gabriel Byrne	Fake Brill
Stuart Wilson	Congressman Sam Albert
Jack Black	Fiedler
Laura Cayouette	Christa Hawkins
Loren Dean	Loren Hicks
Dan Butler	NSA Director Shaffer

Seth Green, Tom Sizemore, Jason Robards and Philip Baker Hall made uncredited appearances.

Plot

As the movie opens, the legislature is close to passing legislation to expand surveillance powers of law enforcement agencies. Republican Congressman Phil Hammersly (Jason Robards, uncredited) is trying to stop the bill because he believes it is an invasion of privacy, while Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight) is trying to push the bill through to advance his career. Hammersly is then killed near a lake by two rogue NSA agents loyal to Reynolds, who plant a bottle of heart medication near the body to make the death seem like a heart attack. However, a video camera set up by wildlife researcher Daniel Zavitz (Jason Lee) to monitor geese migration caught the entire incident.

When Zavitz views Hammersley's murder, he realizes that the news reports of a sudden heart attack are false. Zavitz is unaware that an NSA agent saw him retrieve the tape from the video camera. He copies the tape onto a computer cartridge, and when NSA agents arrive, he hides the tape in a TurboExpress and escapes. Tracked by satellite and pursued by NSA agents, Zavitz bumps into an old friend from Georgetown University, labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) who is in a ladies undergarment store shopping for a gift for his wife.

Dean had just come from a meeting with mafia members who control a labor union he is representing. He had raised their ire by showing them a videotape of one of the mafia members consorting with union officials, in violation of his parole. The mafia threaten to kill Dean within a week if he does not give them the name of the source.

While Dean hands Zavitz his business card, Zavitz drops the cartridge with the murder footage into Dean's shopping bag and then flees. Pursued by NSA agents, Zavitz jumps onto a bike and rides down a busy street, where he is hit and killed by a firetruck. After finding Dean's business card on Zavitz' body, the agents visit Dean posing as detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. Unaware that Zavitz gave him the video, Dean tells them he has no knowledge of their allegations that he was passed "sensitive materials", even denying them access to his bags without a warrant.

The next day the NSA agents break into Dean's house looking for the tape. While they do not find it, they plant tracking bugs in his clothes and personal items. The NSA smears him with a false story about a love affair with Rachel Banks, an old girlfriend who acted as an intermediary between Dean and her contact, the source of the mafia tape. He is fired from his law firm and thrown out of the house by his wife. When he attempts to check into a hotel for the night, he learns his credit cards have been canceled and somebody has stolen his attaché case. With Rachel's help, Dean meets her contact, retired NSA agent Brill (Gene Hackman), who shows him the bugs that have been planted in his belongings, and tells him the NSA is after him. Dean heads home and is able to convince his wife that he never had an affair with Rachel and after telling her everything he realizes that his son must have gotten ahold of what Zavitz was trying to give him and quickly retrieves it. After Dean finds out that Rachel had been killed by Reynold's team to frame him for murder, he and Brill make contact and finally discover that they possess the murder video - just minutes before it is destroyed in an attack by the NSA. Reynolds' team tracked them down after Dean carelessly made a phone call at a nearby convenience store.

While on the run, Brill reveals that he served as Rachel's contact because her late father was his partner prior to his retirement. Deciding to finish what they started, Dean and Brill use methods on Congressman Sam Albert (Stuart Wilson), similar to those used on Dean, to expose details of the illegal NSA operation to the NSA's top brass to get Reynolds attention and arrange a meeting with him. Their plan is to incriminate Reynolds by recording his conversation with Brill about the conspiracy on tape, but it fails due to Dean's inexperience.

Dean and Brill are captured, and it is apparent that they will be killed in order to eliminate any witnesses. Dean turns the tables by claiming that the leader of the Pintero mafia family has the tape Reynolds is after. This leads the conspirators back to the Italian restaurant that Dean visited earlier in the movie, which he knows is under surveillance by the FBI. Dean then convinces Pintero that Reynolds made the tape of his meeting with the union leaders. Reynolds believes that the tape in question documents the Hammersley murder. The situation quickly becomes a Mexican standoff between the agents and mobsters, escalating into a firefight.

Dean and Brill are among the few survivors. Reynolds, nearly all of the rogue agents involved in the conspiracy, and most of the mobsters – including Pintero – are killed. The FBI sweeps in and the plot behind the legislation is soon exposed. The only two surviving conspirators, NSA technicians Fiedler (Jack Black) and Jamie (Jamie Kennedy) are taken into custody by the FBI, and the NSA's involvement is covered up by the FBI, by implicating the late Pintero as the one who killed Rachel Banks. Sam Albert informs the media in an interview that the bill did not pass the legislature, and Dean is cleared of all charges and returns home with his wife, while Brill, who escapes to exile in a tropical locale, sends a friendly message to Dean via his television set.

Production

Although set in Washington DC, most of the filming was done in the neighboring city of Baltimore, Maryland.

Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise were considered for the part that went to Will Smith. George Clooney was also considered for a role in the film. Sean Connery was considered for the role that went to Gene Hackman. The film's crew included a Technical Surveillance Counter-Measures consultant who also had a minor role as a spy shop merchant.

Shots of the NSA satellite, seen frequently during the movie, were re-used in the pilot episode of the TV series 24.

Reception

Enemy of the State was generally well-received by professional critics. Rotten Tomatoes presented a "71% fresh" rating for the movie, with forty-nine critics approving of the movie and twenty noting the film as "rotten;"^[3] similar results could be found at the website Metacritic, which displayed a normalized ranking of sixty-seven out of one hundred on the basis of the views of twenty-two critics.^[4] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times expressed enjoyment in the movie, noting how the movie's "pizazz [overcame] occasional lapses in moment-to-moment plausibility;"^[5] 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."^[6] In a combination of the twos' views, Edvins Beitiks of the San Francisco Examiner both praised many of the movies' development aspects, and criticized how the concept that drove the movie from the beginning, the efficiency of government intelligence, lacked realism.^[7]

Box office

The film opened at #2, behind The Rugrats Movie, grossing $20,038,573 over its first weekend in 2,393 theaters and averaging about $8,374 per venue.

Notes

1. ^ "Enemy Of The State Music Review". Music from the Movies (1998). Retrieved on 2008-06-29.
2. ^ ^{a b} "Enemy of the State box office publications". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2008-06-29.
3. ^ "Enemy of the State (1998)". Rotten Tomatoes. IGN Entertainment, Inc. (1998). Retrieved on 2008-10-25.
4. ^ "Enemy of the State (1998): Reviews". Metacritic. CNET Networks, Inc. (1998). Retrieved on 2008-10-25.
5. ^ Turan, Kenneth. "Enemy of the State: 'Enemy' Has a Little Secret: Let the (Nifty) Chase Begin", Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on 25 October 2008. 
6. ^ Maslin, Janet (November 20, 1998). "Enemy of the State: The Walls Have Ears, Eyes, and Cameras", New York Times. Retrieved on 25 October 2008. 
7. ^ Beitiks, Edvins (November 20, 1998). "High-octane "Enemy'", SFGate. Retrieved on 25 October 2008. 

See also

• Conspiracy thriller
• The Conversation

v • d • e Films directed by Tony Scott Loving Memory (1969) • The Hunger (1983) • Top Gun (1986) • Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) • Revenge (1990) • Days of Thunder (1990) • The Last Boy Scout (1991) • True Romance (1993) • Crimson Tide (1995) • The Fan (1996) • Enemy of the State (1998) • Spy Game (2001) • Man on Fire (2004) • Domino (2005) • Déjà Vu (2006) • The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) • The Warriors (2010)

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