Enemy of the State (1998)
Action | Drama | Thriller

Hot Hollywood favorite Will Smith stars with two-time Academy Award winner Gene Hackman in a high-powered suspense thriller where nonstop action meets cutting-edge technology! Robert Clayton Dean (Smith) is a successful Washington, D.C. attorney who – without his knowledge – is given a video that ties a top official of the national security agency (Voight) to a political murder! Instantly, every aspect of Dean’s once-normal life is targeted by a lethal team of skilled NSA surveillance operatives, who wage a relentless, ultrahigh-tech campaign to discredit him and retrieve the incriminating evidence.

Also featuring Regina King in an impressive, star-studded cast – get ready for the action to explode as Dean desperately races to reclaim his life and prove his innocence…before it’s too late!

Storyline: Robert dean is a mild-mannered lawyer who works in Washington D.C. He is on the trail of a kingpin named Pintero. Meanwhile, a politician named Thomas Reynolds is negotiating with Congressman Phillip Hammersley about a new surveillance system with satellites. But, Hammersley declines, that is when Reynolds had Hammersley killed, but this murder was caught on tape, and this person was being chased by Reynolds' team of NSA agents, the guy must ditch the tape, so he plants it on Dean (unbeknownst to Dean). Then, the NSA decides to get into Dean's life. That is when Dean's life began to fall apart all around him, with his wife and job both gone. Dean wants to find out what is going on. Then, he meets a man named "Brill" who tells him that Dean has something that the government wants. That is when Dean and Brill formulate a plan to get Dean's life back and turn the Tables on Reynolds. Written by John Wiggins

User Comment: Scott LeBrun from Winnipeg, Canada, 2 March 2003 • Will Smith plays Robert Dean, a successful Washington, D.C. attorney who is passed a tape by an old friend (Jason Lee) on the run; it turns out that the tape secretly recorded a politically motivated murder and now the psychos who committed the crime start methodically ruining Dean's life in an effort to discredit him should he come forward with the evidence. Dean is ultimately forced to team up with Brill (Gene Hackman), a lone-wolf operative who's helped him with some of his cases in the past.

I love this movie, for one main reason: Once it gets going, it moves a mile a minute, with truly breathtaking chase scenes. It's reasonably intelligent, well-cast (and well-acted, needless to say), and the central dilemma of the film - the complete invasion of our privacy by the government jerks who are supposed to be protecting us - is too scary to ignore.

Try it and see if you like it!

It's a long movie, but it was made by skilled veterans who know how to create big-budget thrills and therefore doesn't seem as long as it is.

Summary: Can you imagine not having any privacy at all?

--- JOYA ---

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