Enemy Of The State
(Touchstone, 1998)
The late director Tony Scott was many things, including given to flash over substance, substituting jump-cut action for dialogue or plot development, and much more, but he unquestionably had an eye for arresting imagery, and he was always, in his movies, about ten minutes ahead of the world. Enemy Of The State demonstrates all of that in spades, and more. The awkward buddy-pairing of Gene Hackman and Will Smith, played dramatically straight, was casting genius. The number of credited and uncredited actors appearing in supporting roles is a pretty good Who's Who list in itself. But the story, which embarrassed the NSA at the time, turned out to be uncomfortably paralleled by real-life developments 15 years later, with revelations of the NSA spying on the Congress, the press, and every single citizen, and Tony Scott took the world there back in 1998. And with visual flash, jump-cut action, and an unsuspected amount of prescient substance, all wrapped up in tightly wound flick.
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4 comments:
Considering the current "situation", perhaps you should make "The Omega Man" the subject of a Flick Pick. Because of your fine reporting on this subject, I see you as the Anthony Zerbe character at the start of the film.
Please refrain from mutating and becoming the leader of The Family.
I second that emotion.
Don't mutate.
Instead of a BAR with an infra-red scope, perhaps an M14 with PVS-14?
Instead of Swedish K with a spotlight, perhaps...well, something a little better.
Secret Code: Rheede epsoty.
While I lived in L.A. and had a classic Mustang once upon a time, I was thinking an MRAP with a minigun and AGL tandem in the turret; and an MP5SD with a thermal sight and IR laser, along with some NVGs.
Matthias and The Family wouldn't stand a chance.
I could also hang with flying the gyrocopter from Road Warrior, with a case of glass soda-bottle molotovs to drop over the side.
Purely as an apocalypse mental planning exercise.
There will be no Omega Man in the Flick Picks though. It never made the cut, and I'm wrapping the series up in a few more days at the one-year mark, which was always the point: 366 Movies - entertainment for a year.
After that, I'll probably start reviewing current flicks on occasion, if I see anything I'd recommend in the first place.
It's been a pretty lean year or three for good movies.
Gene Hackman's character had one of the most amazing movie lines... "it may no longer be the land of the free, but it is still the home of the brave..." Hackman's character replies "it had better be"
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