Back when one of the riskiest things in Will Smith’s acting career was “Wild Wild West,” he still managed to become the biggest movie star on the planet. Stamping the former “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” on a poster guaranteed huge success, even though at this point he rarely challenged the acting muscles the world would soon see he could flex. Thankfully, he finally risked it in 1998, when director Tony Scott took the star of one of the best alien invasion movies ever, “Independence Day,” and cast him in a star-studded thriller that still resonates today.
“Enemy of the State” was regarded as one of Smith’s most intense and demanding roles at the time, portraying a more mature hero rather than a wisecracking one who laughs in the face of aliens. Here, he is Robert Clayton Dean, a labor lawyer who finds himself caught in a conspiracy involving the murder of a U.S. congressman and government coverup. What follows is an advanced game of cat and mouse as Dean realizes just how much he’s being monitored. This offers a terrifying insight into the level of surveillance, giving us a glimpse of the omnipresent eye that none of us can escape in today’s world.
Enemy of the State felt like an unofficial sequel to a bona fide classic
In a clever example of meta movie casting, Smith is cast alongside Gene Hackman, playing Brill, a former NSA analyst. This character is reminiscent of Hackman’s surveillance expert role in the 1974 film, “The Conversation.” Generations apart, both movies unmask how easily those in power can secretly invade anyone’s privacy. “Enemy of the State” resonates now more than ever with Brill proclaiming: “They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls. Every wire, every airwave. The more technology used, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you. It’s a brave new world out there. At least it’d better be.”
Today, Brill’s statement to Dean reads less like movie fiction and more like a warning of what was to come. Scott’s gritty filming style is filled with shots of aerial surveillance footage, security camera snippets, and dialogue captured by wired microphones, which add authenticity to an already intense thriller.
Enemy of the State was a spy movie that was ahead of its time
The phones might be a little heftier and the televisions a little on the chunky side in comparison to today’s tech, but there’s no question that “Enemy of the State” was giving us a glimpse of what was on the horizon. In the movie, Dean’s nightmare scenario stems from new legislation trying to be passed that would give the NSA the go-ahead to monitor anyone they deem a threat. What was then an unthinkable government act became a reality just three years later, when, in 2001, the Patriot Act was put in place after 9/11.
In an era of unknown terror, cinema changed with the times, and films began to look more like the hi-tech, cold-cut thriller that Smith and Hackman starred in. Hidden cameras and overhead surveillance were becoming a common storytelling device, often accompanied by a seasoned government stooge in an office full of monitors demanding that they “get eyes on” heroes like Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer. Flash forward to today, and that hasn’t changed, with shows like Netflix’s “The Night Agent” and Apple TV’s “Slow Horses,” caught in a similar lens. Even with all these spies on the run, though, it was Will Smith playing a lawyer who gave us a realistic glimpse at how technology can be used against us. And this movie is still worth watching all these years later.
