In a film that plays like a "Where's Waldo" of Hollywood's younger actors, Will Smith stars as Washington, DC lawyer who is slipped an "item" the government wants to get their hands on. A somewhat similar film came out last year, "The Game", where Michael Douglas played a businessman who was on the run from a force that was seemingly everywhere. It was a good idea, but executed poorly. I thought "The Game" was a slow moving, unexciting thriller with a character the audience couldn't sympathize with in Douglas's cold businessman, not to mention an ending that ruined the film, at least for me.
Now, take that idea, blow it up a thousand percent and add a producer known for explosive films(Jerry Bruckheimer) and you get this film, which is a far more thrilling, far more interesting look at how the government controls and monitors our each and every action. Smith is on the run from "the surveillance society", a government rogue force that wants to expand its reach even farther into the homes of every American with a new bill that is to be presented to the Congress. An influencial congressman is murdered, setting into order the events of the film; an enviromentalist happens to be watching at the time of the murder and the tape he possesses becomes the sought after item after he places it in the Christmas bag of the Smith character, Robert Dean.
As for the "Where's Waldo" aspect, the movie features so many of Hollywood's young actors, it almost plays like a game of "Spot the Actor".Included are Barry Pepper("Saving Private Ryan"), Loren Dean("Gattaca"), Seth Green("Austin Powers"), Jamie Kennedy("Scream") and Jason Lee("Chasing Amy"). Other actors in small parts include Tom Sizemore and even Gabriel Byrne.
As the leader of this rogue agency, Jon Voight turns in only a fair performance. He's the easily identifiable bad guy, sure, but we rarely sense any sort of danger from his character. The only interesting bad guys are the kids who seemingly run the whole thing, from the Seth Green character to the Loren Dean character. These characters seem like kids who graduated from surfing the internet to intercepting signals from global satellites. It's unfortunate that, like myself in my recent college midterms, the movie is in an incredible hurry to get the whole thing over with. We don't get much of the background on any of the characters except for bits and pieces on Smith's character, Robert Dean.
Gene Hackman, as Smith's only friend in the whole matter, comes in far too late in the movie to build much interest in the character; it's not Hackman, it's the fact that, like many of the other supporting cast, he's just not given too terribly much to say or do.
The movie flys by with the exception of a few quiet scenes for the audience to take a breath. I may have given a sense that I didn't like the movie in the previous paragraph, but that's not entirely true. There are a lot of scenes in the film that work very, very well and overall, I enjoyed it. It has a great sense of paranoia going for it and some very well done action scenes. It's just one of those films that goes by so quickly that it's not until afterwards that you begin to consider it's faults. Still, Tony Scott has done an outstanding job, at least technically, with this film and it's array of dazzling gadgets that follow Robert Dean through his life. The satellite shots, the camerawork, it's all bright, fast and mostly, it'll have you on your seat's edge.
It's unfortunate, though, that Scott couldn't have put together a film that works as well as his "Crimson Tide" did. That was a great, smart thriller that had the element of claustrophobia in its closed confines of a neuclear millitary submarine. I would have liked a little bit of a "cramped" nature in this film to add to some sort of sense of danger and peril for our hero. Slight complaints, though, in a film that works enough during it's running time to recommend it. "Enemy" is at least much more satisfying, much more exciting and much richer entertainment than many of the "big" event pictures this year.
3 stars(***)