User:Caulde/enemy of the state
Enemy of the State | |
---|---|
7 January 1999 | |
Running time | 131 min |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | US$90,000,000[2] |
Box office | US$250,649,836[2] |
Enemy of the State is a 1998 spy film directed by Tony Scott and starring both Will Smith and Gene Hackman.
The premise of the film is the impending introduction of legislation to limit law enforcement agencies in their powers. A senator involved in the legislation is killed by rogue NSA agents. The operatives are not aware of the fact that the murder is being filmed by an automated device used to tracking populations of geese. A young man removes the tape from the device, and upon playing it back discovers that it contains footage of the murder. Will Smith plays a lawyer working in trade union cases, often dealing with mafia elements. While shopping for a present for a former mistress, the young man - now being hotly pursued by
It was written by
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 |
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
When Zavitz views Hammersley's murder, he realizes that the news reports of a sudden
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
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 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 is after the tape of his meeting with the union leaders. Reynolds believes that the tape in question is of the Hammersley murder. The situation quickly becomes a Mexican standoff between the agents and mobsters, and escalates 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. Dean is cleared of all charges and returns home with his wife, and 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 film was done in the neighboring city of
Trivia
This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (July 2007) |
- Reynolds, the antagonist and foremost proponent of the anti-privacy bill, was born on September 11, 1940 which was the date Bell Labs researcher, George Stibitz, demonstrated the first remote operation (i.e. over a phone line) of a computer machine.
- Shots of the NSA satellite, seen frequently during the movie, were re-used in the pilot episode of the TV series 24.
- In the making-of video documentary on the 2006 DVD release of the film , it is revealed that "The Jar", the copper-mesh Faraday cage that surrounds Brill's workstation, was so effective in blocking transmissions as accurately depicted that audio technicians were forced to put the receivers for Hackman's and Smith's wireless microphones inside the cage.
- The shot where Fiedler rotates the security image of Dean ninety degrees to discover the location of the tape is physically impossible and could not be achieved without some sort of 3-D recording technology, let alone a security camera.
- The movie's claim that the federal government possesses the ability to spy on individuals through virtually all electronic means is based upon conspiracy theories surrounding the government's ECHELON program.
- A screen shot of Hackman photograph from The Conversation was used in Enemy of the State, precisely when the surveillance experts of Enemy of the State get the digital ID photo of Gene Hackman
- When Brill's laptop is shown in the Faraday cage, it is using Quicktimefor the Windows operating system. For some reason, just before beginning to 'decrypt' a video, Brill opens an image of a powerboat in Paint.
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
- ^ "Enemy Of The State Music Review". Music from the Movies. 1998. Retrieved 2008-06-29.
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(help) - ^ a b "Enemy of the State box office publications". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2008-06-29.
See also
- Conspiracy thriller
- The Conversation