Apparently Gene Hackman is so good he is in it twice!
Movies suggest that erasing someone from existence is quite a simple exercise. The Net proposed that the person who no longer exists can walk around in broad daylight trying to reclaim herself.
With the government and its unlimited resources on tap, how can any one man – even a handsome and charismatic Will Smith – avoid becoming an Enemy of the State? Here is a film that implies the presence of Big Brother might be a… bad thing?
Wow, what a fresh new angle.
Once Robert is implicated in a variety of serious crimes, he finds he has nowhere to hide and no one willing to help him. Even his loving wife has her doubts.
Meanwhile in dimly lit rooms filled with panels of lights and small screens, grips of ‘hey it’s that guy(s)’ including Jack Black, Seth Green and Jamie Kennedy – is this a movie or a prank show? – track and plot his capture. Using what seems to be a budget in excess of the U.S. national deficit, they pick apart successful lawyer Robert’s life one stitch at a time, forcing him to run constantly from one set piece to the next.
Hampering Robert’s evasive abilities is the fact that only he seems to have to obey the laws of physics. In one scene a guy on foot keeps pace with someone riding a bicycle at full speed going downhill, in another a guy on foot proves too fast for a car over several hundred metres. It all seems so very unfair. Perhaps confused by all of these inconsistencies Robert asks his wife “remember that day when…?”, referring to an event that the film suggests happens only hours previous.
People appear and disappear as the script requires, including the mysterious character played by Gene Hackman who tries his hand as a Morpheus type. Director Tony Scott strives to make it as compelling and tense as possible, but this is really just an exercise in making the likeable box office commodity run.
Perhaps an indication of the thin premise, is Scott’s decision to steal his own climax from True Romance to clumsily close out this film. While it suited the tone of that film, here it seems patently ridiculous and out of place. But then again, this is a popcorn flick masquerading as a thriller, so it might almost be apt that a stolen identity film steals itself from another entity.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Will Smith arrives at his ‘let’s take no chances’ phase, and it’s so warm and cosy that he opts to stay there a full decade.
