Starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Jason Lee, Regina King, Lisa Bonet, Gabriel Byrne, Tom Sizemore, Jack Black, Stuart Wilson, Jake Busey, Scott Caan, James Le Gros, Barry Pepper, Jamie Kennedy
Written By: David Marconi
Directed By: Tony Scott
Studio: Disney / Buena Vista
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I’ve always loved this action thriller since I saw it in the movie theater back when it was released. There’s a lot of great actors in this movie and the story is intense. It’s also kind of freaky that the Gubment has all these capabilities to do this sort of stuff. Its downright scary to be honest. But I think this is one of Tony Scott’s more entertaining movies to date. And probably one of the films where Will Smith isn’t over the top or too annoying in.

Enemy of the States starts out with a NSA Official, Reynolds (Jon Voight) confronting a Congressman about an important bill and advises him to join their side. The politician doesn’t budge and the NSA officials orders his lackeys to murder him. But what they didn’t know that incident was being recorded by a bird watcher. The NSA find out the bird watcher guy has them on tape murdering Congressman Hammersley and they go after that guy. The tape that he recorded ends up with someone else, a successful lawyer from DC named Robert Dean (Will Smith) who has quite a few skeletons in his closet. Besides having a case concerning the mafia & his life being threatened over it; he has ties to a mysterious woman who he once had an affair with. The NSA go after him hard and turn his life upside down to get what he knows and has. Robert Dean goes into hiding and enlists the help of a former NSA operative and super intelligent surveillance agent who’s name is Brill (Gene Hackman). Together, they try to foil the NSA’s plans and clear their names from the murders.

When I first saw this movie, I was completely scared what the government was capable of back then. Imagine what they can do now! Some of these points in the movie still pertain today, with wire taps, to being taped & watched all the time. I guess the only thing you can do is don’t do anything illegal because you’ll get caught haha. Obviously it’s totally wrong to get spied on, but with this movie they went after Dean because he knew something he wasn’t supposed to know. So it makes for a highly entertaining cat & mouse game. The action is great throughout the whole movie and it feels like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. It also feels like a Tony Scott movie because well he directed it, but the way it was shot. All the gadgetry and hi-tech stuff, and the way the satellites were used as camera shots seems like something Tony Scott would do nowadays. No matter how many times I’ve seen this movie, I still love watching it because it keeps you on the edge of your seat. To this day, I still think that ending was one of the most satisfying & exciting endings in an action movie. Just because two groups of people you hate in the movie, gun it down and kill each other while the real good guys walk away from it. That’s just awesome to me! And I also like it because you forgot about Tom Sizemore’s character in the beginning. Then everything comes together and you go “ah ha!”

I can’t believe how many actors were in this movie. Well besides Will Smith & Gene Hackman having strangely good chemistry together, all the small actors in this movie ended up being pretty damn popular after this. Jason Lee was in this movie for a little bit, along with Jack Black, Jamie Kennedy, Seth Green, Scott Caan, Barry Pepper, and Jake Busy. It was just cool to see all of them in the movie together and I thought most of them their scenes were fun and sometimes really funny. Especially with the new scenes added into this movie, there’s more of Jack Black’s character making more disgusting jokes and just more of the NSA people. Unlike the Crimson Tide Extended DVD, I did notice the scenes that were added. Were the scenes important? No, but it was still nice to see the movie extended and see some added humor into the movie. Though you’re not gonna watch this movie for humor, you’re going to watch this for the action. It still holds up after all these years and still love that whole scene where Dean is running away from the NSA. But like I said, the ending is still my favorite part of the movie.

Since this DVD is a special edition, there are some new bonus features. There are two deleted scenes that don’t make it into the uncut extended edition Dvd. One where Scott Caan gets bite by Dean’s dog, and then when Robert Dean is trying to figure out if the mob is doing this stuff to him. Nothing too special with those scenes and I can see why they were cut in the first place. The best extras on here are 2 featurettes that are from back when the movie was made. There’s a behind the scenes look at the Showdown, the end sequence. Seeing what’s involved and how they did it. The Making of was about a half hour long and it was really interesting. They had interviews with the tech advisers from the movie, and they were were a bit creepy & weird. But they went through this sort of stuff so it was neat to hear what they had to say. That’s worth checking out for sure.

Enemy of the State is an entertaining, hi-tech action thriller that will keep you at the edge of your seat the entire movie. It will also freak you out with all the stuff they could do in the movie (which is probably going to freak you out even more now since it’s been a few years since this came out). If you really care about missing a few minor scenes from the movie, than this DVD is something to get. But it’s not necessarily a dire need.

Features:
The Making of Enemy Of The State
All Access: “The Showdown”
Theatrical Trailer
Deleted Scenes

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 CC

Video:
Widescreen 2.35:1 Color (Anamorphic)

Subtitles:
English

Favorite Scenes: The chase scene through the tunnel, when Dean meets Brill for the first time, Brill & Dean escape from his secret building, the end scene was just awesome!
Rating: NR
Running Time: 140 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: