Enemy Of The State (1998)

Starring - Will Smith; Gene Hackman; Jon Voight; Lisa Bonet & Regina King Director - Tony Scott MPAA - Rated R for language and violence. If nothing else, Enemy Of The State will do one thing. It leaves no doubt that Will Smith is officially a movie star. While Smith has been in other hits like Independence Day and Men In Black, their success could be attributed as much to their high-end special effects and not so much to Smith's presence. Well, no more. While Enemy Of The State has great action sequences and special effects, the main attraction here is Will Smith. He does a great job in this film, and when you throw Gene Hackman and Jon Voight into the mix, you can almost guarantee that you have a very entertaining movie. Smith plays an attorney who becomes mixed up in something that he wants no part of. A secret US Government agency thinks that Smith's character has acquired some very sensitive information that they don't want him to have. They are afraid that he may leak this information to the press and ruin them. So the agency, led by a very nasty Jon Voight, sets out do discredit him as a preemptive strike, in case he can use this information before they can get it back from him. Along the way Smith enlists the help of a former Government surveillance expert (Gene Hackman) in order to get his life back. Enemy Of the State is a top notch movie in every sense of the word. The acting is terrific, the writing is intelligent, and visually it looks great. Smith does a great job carrying the film, and he very easily proves that he is capable of more than just comic relief in a movie. No surprises when it comes to the performances of Gene Hackman and Jon Voight. These two men leave little doubt why they are two of the most talented actors working today. In a little bit of irony, Hackman's paranoid surveillance expert could almost be the same character that he played back in the early seventies in The Conversation. The irony being that The Conversation in one of the worst films of all time and Enemy Of The State is one of the better movies of the year. The other thing that is worth mentioning is the fact that unlike many other similar cloak and dagger type movies, Enemy Of The State doesn't suffer from the inevitable confusing plot twists that usually plague this type of movie. At no point will you find yourself scratching your head wondering what the heck is going on. This is not to say that Enemy Of The State is without it's intricate plot twists, quite the contrary. The writing is simply so slick that a brain-damaged chimpanzee could follow along. Another interesting part of this movie is the technology that the government uses to track and spy on Will Smith's character. You can't help getting just a little uneasy when you wonder just who much of this stuff is real, and how much of it is just strictly a work of fiction. My money is on very little fiction. Enemy Of The State should appeal to action fans and fans of the suspense genre alike. Will Smith fans will not be disappointed either. While he isn't cracking jokes in this movie, his charisma makes up for it. Enemy Of The State is a very entertaining way to spend a couple of hours. 8/10 Reviewed November 29, 1998 by Joe Chamberlain