Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State arrived in theaters on November 20, 1998, with a tagline that doubled as a thesis: “It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.” Will Smith plays Robert Clayton Dean, a labor lawyer who becomes the target of a covert surveillance operation after he unwittingly receives evidence of a political assassination. Gene Hackman co-stars as the former intelligence operative who helps him run.
Trailer, via HD Retro Trailers.
A Congressman, a Disc, and a Dead Biologist
The machinery starts with Congressman Phil Hammersley, who opposes a counterterrorism bill that would expand surveillance powers for American intelligence agencies. He argues it threatens civil liberties. NSA Assistant Director Thomas Reynolds, who supports the bill and stands to gain professionally from its passage, orders him killed. His team stages the murder as a car accident brought on by a heart attack.
Wildlife biologist Daniel Zavitz then finds footage of the killing, captured by a remote camera. Reynolds sends his team after him. A panicking Zavitz runs into Dean, an old college acquaintance, and slips the incriminating disc into his shopping bag before he is struck and killed in traffic. Reynolds’ team finds Dean’s business card on the corpse and wrongly assumes he knows about the tape.
What follows is the film’s real subject: the systematic dismantling of a private life.
The Frame Is the Point
The NSA agents impersonate police officers and try to enter Dean’s home without a search warrant. When he stops them, they break in later and plant surveillance devices in his clothes and personal effects. They publicize false evidence linking him to money laundering and an affair with Rachel Banks, his ex-girlfriend and Brill’s courier. He loses his job. The IRS seizes his car and bank account. His wife Carla kicks him out of the house.
That sequence is the most convincing thing in Enemy of the State. The film does not need a chase to make its case; it just shows a man’s ordinary life being switched off, item by item. Dean’s desperation is bureaucratic before it is physical.
Hackman Steadies What Smith Carries
The cast is deep. Jon Voight plays Reynolds. Regina King plays Carla. Loren Dean is Hicks, Jake Busey is Krug, Barry Pepper is Pratt, and Jason Lee is Zavitz. Gabriel Byrne appears as an impostor Brill, the NSA’s replacement for the real man when Dean calls Rachel for help.
- Will Smith as Robert Clayton Dean
- Gene Hackman as Edward Lyle / Brill
- Jon Voight as Thomas Reynolds
- Regina King as Carla Dean
- Lisa Bonet as Rachel Banks
Smith carries the first half on charm and rising panic. Hackman, playing the man revealed as Edward Lyle, carries the second on stillness. The film is at its best when the two are in a room together and at its weakest when Scott cuts away to another piece of hardware.
What the Surveillance Bill Actually Costs
Ranked by what the film does well:
- The premise. A surveillance state that ruins a man with paperwork and planted evidence is a sharper idea than any explosion in the runtime.
- The performances. Smith and Hackman were singled out in reviews for good reason, and Voight makes Reynolds a bureaucrat rather than a monster.
- The pacing. Scott keeps the 132 minutes moving, though speed sometimes substitutes for tension.
The film grossed $250.8 million worldwide against a $90 million budget, and critics generally praised its fast-paced direction, original story, timely subject matter, and the two leads. Metacritic’s aggregate sits at 67 out of 100.
Enemy of the State is a good thriller with a great villain: not Reynolds, but the apparatus he serves. Its weakness is that it keeps reaching for bigger set pieces when its most frightening scenes are the small ones — a warrantless knock, a bug in a jacket, a bank account that no longer exists. Twenty-eight years on, the bill Hammersley died opposing is the part that still lands.
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