In light of the recent passing of Tony Scott, which should remind us all that depression is an awful disease that sometimes has no correlation with perceived public success, I've started thinking about his career. The only Tony Scott movie I had actually seen was Top Gun, undoubtedly his biggest success. Top Gun loomed large in my brother's childhood and by extension mine. By our estimation, my brother had watched it over thirty times between the years of 1995-1999. His room was plastered with F-14 Tomcat posters. We attended an air show. Dylan dreamed of being a pilot until the arrival of myopia in 9th grade. The soundtrack was a daily staple of carpool.
The legacy Top Gun was examined back in 2011 in the GQ article "The Day the Movies Died" by Mark Harris. In it, Top Gun essentially gets blamed for destroying the auteur movie experience as we know it. It heralded the dawn of the blockbuster or "brand film". This provides for a compelling thesis, but I think a fairer assessment is that Top Gun was an inflection point for a trend already in motion: the rise of high concept films that could be reduced to a simple marketing soundbyte.
But I don't believe movies have to be one thing. The strength of the medium should be its versatility. Movies can be entertaining popcorn diversions. They can also make you think and provide subtler enjoyment. Sometimes this manifests itself in the syntactical difference between "films" and "movies." I hate this dichotomy. Movies/films are all part of the same medium and the distinction usually only rests on a crude assessment of subject matter and quality. If you were going to fit the Scott brothers into this dichotomy, Tony would have been called the moviemaker, Ridley the filmmaker.
Home in LA for the weekend, my dad was excited about receiving Enemy of the State on Netflix. It had always been a favorite of his, so it was time for some father/son movie bonding. My brother, the childhood Top Gun fanatic, my dad, and me, the Tony Scott neophyte. And it was a really enjoyable movie experience. It follows lawyer Robert Dean (Will Smith) forced to go on the run when a bird-watcher, Daniel Zavitz (Jason Lee), happens to record the assassination of a politician whose vote is crucial to defeating a Patriot-Act-esque privacy bill. Chance brings the tape into the unknowing hands of Dean after Zavitz is killed in a chase. With the NSA at his disposal and all of the surveillance that entails, the corrupt, wiretap happy politician behind the assassination (Jon Voight) is able to turn Dean's life upside down. It takes a former NSA agent (Gene Hackman) to turn things around for our beleaguered fugitive.
While the idea of being chased by Big Brother was hardly new, the film strikes me as remarkably prescient for the late 90s. It anticipates the Patriot Act and the wiretapping scandals of the last couple of years. The movie hits many of the familiar plot points and structure of fugitive movies. Its first act brings our hero to his emotional nadir, alone, abandoned, and on the run with nothing to lose. In the second act, our hero learns how to beat the NSA at its own game thanks to the mysterious off-the-grid Lyle (Hackman). And the third act provides the reversal, Dean turning the tables on his government pursuers.
Some plot points do stretch credulity: it seems dubious that NSA analysts played by Jack Black and Seth Green would go along with the extreme lengths taken to discredit Dean under the premise of a "training operation." But the performances are solid. It's the first film where Will Smith really grew into his shoes as a likable action adventure star. His character is relatable: well intentioned, yet flawed, haunted by past infidelities.
The movie has genuine thrills. Even if you know where it's heading, I found myself utterly invested in the revenge plot. The movie also offers a B storyline involving the mafia that ties in nicely in the finale. If a little convoluted, it does reward the careful viewer. While its thrills and formula may be conventional, Enemy of the State does make you think about the role of technology, government, and privacy well ahead of its time. Good on Tony Scott.
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