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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

The passing of Gene Hackman made me interested in the actor again, and then I saw that he made a movie with Tony Scott, from Jerry Bruckheimer about surveillance. Recent fascination of mine with Michael Bay and stuff related to him, like the fact that a lot of the style of Bay came almost directly from Tony Scott. And the fact that Bay worked with Bruckheimer in the time this movie was released. And the fact that the star of Bad Boys Will Smith is the star of Enemy of the State. All of that made it inevitable that I should check the movie out.

The plot is a bit like the plot of Spielberg's Minority Report, which makes me think of some strange conspiracy theories about 9/11 and how maybe the whole thing was just an NSA operation. Around that time a lot of interesting movies about surveillance were popping up. Minority Report was famously being developed before 9/11. Yet it was the perfect movie to be released after. Then there are movies like Hackers and Enemy of the State. Which seems like people were getting very nervous about their privacy and the law enforcement's ability to track people down. And then 9/11 happened... anyway...

Unlike Minority Report Enemy of the State is trying to be grounded in reality. But not unlike something like Hackers it struggles a bit with showing realistic computer interfaces. Some of the on screen graphics are so over the top stupid, it's baffling. Like the "zoom in, enhance" but on steroids. Yet, if we ignore those aspects of the film, the plot is surprisingly realistic, even though, at the time, was probably thought of as some kind of sci-fi stuff anyway.

The plot is about a bill that US government wants to pass, that will makes it less problematic for the NSA to spy on people. The thing though, the NSA does something illegal to get that bill through ( killing one of the people who was opposing it politically ), and that act was, by mistake, recorded by a person. So in a clever way, those who want to spy on people now need to deal with the fact that somebody spied on them.

That recording ends up in the hands of Will Smith's character. And now people are chasing him. The story is structured so Smith's character is utterly confused about everything that is happening to him. Yet we see the NSA too making the decisions. Until he meets a person who knows a thing or two about the NSA. And uncovers for him the mystery. Turning the rest of the film pretty much into a standard action film. Though not a dumb one.

The acting was pretty solid. I was very pleasantly surprised to see Jack Black in it playing a computer person. It was not a comedic role. What the hell.

I believe a lot of people should see movies like these today.

Happy Hacking!!!

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