Enemy of the State (Film Review)

1998 Touchstone Pictures
Directed by: Tony Scott; Written by: David Marconi
Starring: Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Regina King, Loren Dean, Jake Busey, Scott Caan, Barry Pepper, and Gabriel Byrne
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 132 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

Robert Clayton Dean is a hotshot, shot-calling lawyer, living the highlife, wife and son, giant house, and an ex-mistress informant, Rachel, who is able to gather an alarming amount of information any time he needs it. However, a chance run-in with an old classmate on the run from the law puts Dean in the government's crosshairs. Unbeknownst to Dean, that old classmate has slipped a recording of a murder into his bag...the murder of a U.S. congressman who was the key opposition to a piece of proposed legislation that would give the government unprecedented access to private citizens' lives. Before Dean knows it, that same government has besmirched his name, sabotaged his marriage, vandalized his home, emptied his bank accounts, and put him on the run. There's only one man who can help: Rachel's actual informant, Brill, a mysterious man who wants nothing to do with Dean...until Rachel is murdered.
Tony Scott's 1998 rapid-fire action thriller, Enemy of the State, just felt like an above average genre flick in 1998. 25 years later, it feels like one of the most prescient films of the 90s, as the United States government enacted the privacy-destroying Patriot Act just a few years after Enemy of the State's release, along with several adjoining pieces of legislation that have given the powers that be unprecedented power. Meanwhile, Americans freely give up their privacy to mega-corporations (and the governments they serve), as they willingly feed those corporations all the private data they can eat from their smartphones everyday. But it's not just Enemy of the State's topical warnings that have been proven correct with time. In the late 90s, some critics considered Scott to be a quick-cut heavy hack. In 2023, he is regarded as an auteur. Scott's direction here is phenomenal, with the viewer getting a voyeuristic POV of the film's events, the quick cutting intentional and artistically done to portray the film's intrusive sense of surveillance.
Scott's action is also high octane, and his actors are game. Will Smith, as Dean, putting a dark twist on his 90s everyman persona, plays a highly flawed and angry man who just wants his life back to normal. Paired with the legendary Gene Hackman as Brill, the duo have a special, unique chemistry, that lends this movie a dramatic heft that might have been missing with any other duo. These two aren't the only well-regarded actors found here, though, as Scott puts together an absolutely unbelievable cast, somehow getting such frequent award winners as Jason Robards and Gabriel Byrne to show up for bit roles, and filling out the field agent villain roles with a seemingly unlimited cupboard of beloved young 90s actors, from Jack Black, to Seth Green, to Barry Pepper, to Jamie Kennedy, to Jake Busey, to Scott Caan, the film almost becomes a game of "who won't show up here?!" You've even got Regina King as Dean's wife and Lisa Bonet as Rachel, and most delightfully, a scenery-chewing Jon Voight as the lead government villain, perhaps the only actor in 1998 who could believably hold their own against Gene Hackman. There's even an uncredited Tom Sizemore in a MAJOR role! It's the best cast of the 90s! I'm not sure there's another film in existence featuring more Oscar winning actors than this one.
The production team holds up their end of the deal, as well. From interior design work that gives a feeling of warm late 90s Christmas comfort away from the cold all-seeing eye, to a crack stunt team who launches cars into trains and through sewer tunnels, hits bicyclists with fire trucks, and blows things up things real good, it is all here and it is spectacular. Musically, Harry Gregson-Williams and Trevor Rabin join together to give the audience their best, providing a score that both invokes the technological aspects of the film, as well as its sweeping, glorious action and dramatics. I love this movie. I'm almost shocked at how well it holds together 25 years later. Rest in piece, Tony.