ENEMY OF THE STATE - Blu-ray review

You don't have to watch much of "Enemy of the State" before you're thinking it's all a bunch of post-9/11 hooey, with those left-wing Hollywood radicals making the Patriot Act look like such a gargantuan intrusion on citizens' private lives that even George Orwell would be shocked. But the funny thing is, this movie came out in 1998, and Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson began developing the story a full decade before the Bush administration pushed through a bill that's made the ACLU hopping mad.

So you'll have to excuse director Tony Scott if this film is stuffed fuller than a holiday turkey with paranoia and over-the-top scenarios. They weren't making a critique of the Patriot Act. It was a conspiracy thriller in the tradition of John Grisham novels like "The Pelican Brief" that they were after. And the U.S. Government makes it so easy for filmmakers to let their imaginations run wild, because cover-ups and behind-the-scenes power plays seem to be the norm in Washington. After all, even one of the first major terrorist attacks--the bombing of the USS Cole--was claimed to be an accident caused by equipment malfunction before an enterprising reporter from the Navy Times dug up the truth.

But "Enemy of the State" also falls into another tradition. Like "Dr. Strangelove" or "Fail Safe," it exposes a government that's vulnerable to a frightening abuse of power by people in high places.

Here, the villain is Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight), a big shot at the National Security Administration who leans on an aging senator (Jason Robards) to stop trying to block passage of the new Telecommunications Security & Privacy Act--as euphemistically named as the real one we've got now. At a public park, Voight and his NSA henchmen have the audacity to kill the senator and dump his car into the lake. Everything would have been fine, in a matter of speaking, if it weren't for the inconvenient truth that was recorded by a motion-activated camera placed near the murder spot by a biologist who was researching the patterns of migratory birds. All it takes is a glimpse of his license plate as he drives away with the tape for the NSA thugs to tap into his phone and use computers to track his every movement. As a matter of fact, these NSA people have the power to type anyone's name into their computer and have just about everything about them pop onto the screen--payments they've made, associations they belong to, alma mater, shoe size . . . you name it.

Sounds far-fetched, doesn't it? Well, not if you think about the cookies your computer has been eating, or remember being asked by clerks at stores where you shop to give them your phone number. There's all kinds of information that's been gathered about us. If anyone can type in your address on Mapblast and get detailed directions to your house, why not more? When I lived in Milwaukee, Pres. Reagan was scheduled to visit. Just two days before his arrival, I received a mysterious phone call. I'm in public relations, so I was able to spot this phony "telephone survey" in a minute. The caller, who sounded like a man in black, asked me in a stiff and official voice what my feelings were about the president. After a few more questions, I finally just said, "Look, I think he's doing a terrible job, and I've said so more than a few times in letters to newspapers and to the president himself. But if you're wondering if I'm going to go out and buy a high-powered rifle, the answer is no. I use words to make my statements." Now, the average telemarketer would have been thrown way off their game by that, or hung up on me. But this fellow calmly thanked me, hung up, and, I imagined, crossed me off his list. Later, I read that the precautions for the president's visit were so extensive that even all the manhole covers were welded shut on his motorcade route.

That's the level of paranoia and government intrusion that we're talking about here. When the biologist (Jason Lee) is pursued and plants his mini-camera and the "hot" tape on an old college acquaintance, things really start to mushroom out of control. That acquaintance--a lawyer named Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) who's been fearless enough to play hardball with the mafia on behalf of his labor clients--ends up being the target of physical chases and all sorts of NSA sabotage to his career and identity. Not only is his wife (Regina King) put in danger, but his old girlfriend and current undercover contact (Lisa Bonet) as well. It's not all intrigue, either. There's plenty of action and violence.

The NSA goons are played convincingly by actors like Jake Busey and Scott Caan, with a little geek squad help from Jack Black as the ultimate computer hacker and tracker. In "The Conversation" (1974), Gene Hackman played an eavesdropper. Here, he's an eavesdropout, a former agent who knows the game that's being played and who ends up helping the embattled lawyer fight back.

Smith and Hackman are consummate professionals who quickly make you forget that they're actors and pull you into the drama, and that helps, because we're talking about a movie that swells with paranoia and malicious government mischief.

If you believe that powerful government officials are capable of marshalling all of their agency's underlings and resources to perpetuate the kind of atrocities you see in this film and others like it, "Enemy of the State" provides solid entertainment . . . and maybe a few twinges of paranoia.

Video:
This is an older film by HD standards, and there's an ultra-slight graininess that you usually don't see in Blu-ray, which means that the source materials were a little rough. It's a decent but not great picture. The backgrounds tend to be a little fuzzy. Same with hazy daylight scenes and Christmas lights. There's a decent amount of detail in interior shots and close-ups, but overall it's not nearly the level of detail or black levels that we're seeing on more recent Blu-ray releases such as "Superman Returns." The 1080p Hi-Def picture is presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio,

Audio:
The sound is a little more what we're used to seeing now, with the 5.1 48kHz, 24-bit uncompressed audio sounding pure and robust, as advertised. There's plenty of movement across the speakers to match the movement of sound across your screen (and implied off-screen areas), and a nice balance between the treble and bass. Other language options are French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in English SDH, French, and Spanish.

Extras:
The extras are touted as also being in Hi-Def, but they still look a little rough to me. Four short deleted scenes are included, along with a theatrical trailer and two short behind-the-scenes features that show the actors practicing their craft on-set. The bonus features are letterboxed so that they play at a 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

And if the film didn't give you enough to think about, listen to Will Smith talk about the film's level of believability: "Anything that you see in a movie, you have to believe we're 10 or 15 years behind what they actually have." You can bet that the next time a president visits Smith's town, he's going to be on their call-list.

Bottom Line:
"Enemy of the State" is a solid thriller, one which is eerily prescient, given the Patriot Act and all the unauthorized wiretapping and surveillance that the Bush administration has been engaged in. It's a good movie to add to your collection, though the source materials for this 1998 film aren't so pristine that it makes the Blu-ray a must-add.