Touchstone Pictures, Rated R
Directed by Tony Scott
Written by David Marconi

Enemy of the State is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. This is very important information, because Bruckheimer films have a very unique feel to them. The most recent ones, ConAir and Armageddon, have been filled with assault-on-the-senses sound, editing and/or special effects. Whenever you plan to see a Bruckheimer film, be sure to bring some Excedrin. For once, at least, Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott got it right. Or perhaps they found a good enough script to fit their style of filmmaking.
There is a lot of style in Enemy of the State, a movie about Robert Dean (Will Smith), an average joe, who finds himself chased by the government when he unknowingly gains possession of a computer disk with evidence that a senator was killed by a high-ranking government official (Jon Voight). The official uses everything at his disposal (and that's a lot) to track down Dean including digging up dirt on him and bugging him everywhere he goes. The movie is frightening in that a lot of this could actually happen (though, granted, one must suspend one's disbelief a good bit). You can go online and see your house from a satellite picture, who knows what they're not showing you? The group of cybergeek-types who chase down Dean are a talented group of young actors including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Seth Green and Scream's Jamie Kennedy. However, these guys aren't given a lot to do other than make a wisecrack here and there. The ending is a bit overblown but a lot of it is ingenious. Gene Hackman really makes the movie in his role as the only man Dean can trust. It's certainly an original suspense flick (though one thinks of The Net on a few occasions) and the acting is good, and if it were all consistently believable it would be perfect. ***

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