Enemy Of The State – Unrated Extended Edition

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Film: B

 

 

It took a long time for Will Smith to catch on as an action star after being almost totally typecast as a comic actor, but Tom Cruise’s extended shoot on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) prevented him from reuniting with his Firm co-star Gene Hackman for Enemy Of The State, a 1998 thriller that has the team of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson do with Hackman’s Francis Coppola classic The Conversation (1974) what The Rock did with Sean Connery’s James Bond:  bring them into a new generation of slicker (though less substantial) filmmaking for everyone to enjoy.

 

Smith plays a lawyer who unknowingly comes into possession of top-secret government data, which makes him a major target.  It shows that a respectable top official (Jon Voight) has committed a brutal murder and when knowledge of such a record is intercepted, the man and his crack team are out to find it.  That leaves Robert (Smith) in the dark, not knowing what he is walking into.  He has a happy life with his wife (the underrated Regina King) and family, just doing his job, but that is all about to change.  Then, just when it seems he’s finished, in comes a mysterious figure (Hackman) who is a few steps ahead of everyone and knows something is very wrong.  They don’t like each other, but might have to work together or face fatal consequences.

 

Hackman is really good here as the not-so-paranoid wiretapper from the past who has a few surprises left in him.  A veiled mentoring that has been in this genre since Connery showed up in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) was not just taken over by the Bruckheimer/Simpson team, but they ran with it as long as they could and it lead to some of their best work and biggest commercial successes.  Smith surprises too, toning down his broad humor without abandoning it and showing his able-bodied abilities in the genre.  This film made Smith’s career in ways many have not considered or acknowledged, but he did well and he has been on the A-list ever since.  Jake Busey, Barry Pepper, Gabriel Byrne and an uncredited appearance by Lisa Bonet keep the film interesting.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot by Dan Mindel and has some editing by Chris Lebenzon that might still be considered too quick for a narrative film, but we have seen much worse.  Though an improvement from the old DVD, the picture still does not look as good as it did in theaters.  There is some more detail here, but not enough versus film and Video Black is off.  The word was that this would be in a DTS 5.1 mix, but only a passable Dolby Digital mix is included instead.  Unfortunately, dialogue suffers a bit, but you can sometimes get how good the sound effects are.  The music by Trevor Rabin (of Yes) and Harry-Gregson Williams is not bad.  Needless to say Disney needs to make this one of their first Blu-ray releases.

 

Extras include the original trailer for this film, previews of other Disney releases, two featurettes with the usual “making of” being one of them and some interesting deleted scenes.  Enemy Of The State has aged better than most of the Bruckheimer/Simpson films, which is why it is worth revisiting.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo