Back when this movie came out in 1998, before the 9-11 attack and the Patriot Act, the idea of the surveillance state having the wherewithal to use information from telephones, e-mail, surveillance cameras and satellites to choreograph a manhunt in real time seemed like a paranoid\u2019s conspiracy theory nightmare.\u00a0 Well, other than for the ineptitude of our intelligence agency doofuses it\u2019s now a living breathing reality.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Jon Voight plays Thomas Reynolds, a mid-level NSA official who is trying to ensure the passage of a bill very close to the Patriot Act that will legalize the kind of surveillance of American citizens that back then was thought unthinkable.\u00a0 In furtherance of this aim he corners the chairman of the congressional committee responsible for approving the bill at a lake where the congressman is walking his dog.\u00a0 He tries persuasion then threats.\u00a0 But when the congressman refuses to approve the bill and walks away from him Reynolds has an assassin assault him and inject him in the neck with a drug that will simulate a heart attack.\u00a0 Then the congressman is thrown back in his car which is then sent rolling to the bottom of the lake.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for Reynolds, there was a surveillance camera in a wildlife blind that was being used for Canadian Geese wildlife research.\u00a0 This motion activated camera captures the murder and the identity of the murderers.\u00a0 A member of the cabal spots the researcher, Daniel Zavitz, replacing the memory on the camera and alerts Reynolds who has the NSA trace the researcher.\u00a0 Zavitz discovers what he has and hides the video in a video game just in time to escape the NSA hit squad sent out by Reynolds.\u00a0 What ensues is the squad being fed street location information on the fleeing researcher via satellite images.\u00a0 Finally, Zavitz runs into a lingerie store and sees a man he knows named Robert Dean and hides the video in Dean\u2019s shopping bag before running out of the store.\u00a0 He is chased by the team into heavy city traffic where he is run over and killed by a speeding fire truck that happens by at that moment.<\/p>\n Will Smith plays Robert Dean, a labor lawyer that is using his friend, Rachel Banks\u2019 connections to get damaging surveillance evidence against a mafia mob boss to help his client fight back against union breaking intimidation tactics.\u00a0 Rachel has an ex-CIA agent named \u201cBrill\u201d who can get surveillance on anyone.\u00a0 Dean brings the video to the mob boss and tells him to lay off or risk being exposed to prosecution for the evidence on the video.\u00a0 The mob boss threatens Dean that if he does not reveal the identity of Brill, he will kill Dean.\u00a0 Undeterred, Dean goes shopping for a Christmas present for his wife Carla in a lingerie store when Daniel Zavitz shows up.\u00a0 Recognizing Zavitz he hands him his business card before his old acquaintance rushes out of the store.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the NSA team searches Zavitz\u2019 body and fails to find the video but they find Dean\u2019s business card.\u00a0 Reynolds orders them to destroy Dean\u2019s life to facilitate finding the video and also to discredit him in case he tries to expose the video to the public.<\/p>\n And very systematically that is exactly what they do.\u00a0 They break into his home in order to place microphones and tracking devices into his home and his clothing.\u00a0 They send evidence to the police, newspapers and to his courtroom adversaries that makes it appear that he is guilty of fraud, theft and malfeasance.\u00a0 They send photos to his wife that make it appear he is having an affair with Rachel Banks.\u00a0 He\u2019s fired from his job, his credit cards are cancelled and his wife throws him out of the house.\u00a0 Finally in desperation he goes to Rachel Banks\u2019 house.\u00a0 She had at one time been his mistress so he needed her help in clearing his name with his wife.\u00a0 But when he gets there, he finds her murdered and his clothes and belongings staged in the house to make him the suspect.<\/p>\n Now with nowhere else to turn he uses Rachel\u2019s secret signal to contact Brill.\u00a0 Brill, played by Gene Hackman, tells Dean the bad news that the NSA is destroying his life for some information he must have received without knowing it.\u00a0 He also warns him that his clothes must be bugged then he leaves Dean to his fate.\u00a0 Finally, after a manhunt that chases Dean through streets and tunnels and down the side of a hi-rise hotel he sets fire to a building to summon police and rescue personnel to scare off the killers.\u00a0 After he is inside an ambulance, he steals an officer\u2019s gun and escapes.\u00a0 He returns home and finds the video and then meets up with Brill.<\/p>\n We learn that Brill was an NSA agent who was disowned by the agency out of convenience when a mission went sour.\u00a0 His partner was killed in the mission and the partner\u2019s daughter was Rachel Banks.\u00a0 Brill brings Dean to his secret hide out.\u00a0 They decipher the video and discover what the fuss is about.\u00a0 But unfortunately, right before reaching Brill\u2019s base, Dean made a phone call to his wife and the NSA was able to find his location and using satellite data they followed them back to Brill\u2019s base.\u00a0 As the agents break in, Brill and Dean escape just as the building is pulverized by an enormous fireball of an explosion.\u00a0 In the ensuing chase the video is destroyed and so Brill and Dean decide to entrap Reynolds into a confession.\u00a0 But the plan backfires and Brill and Dean are captured by Reynolds and the team.\u00a0 Reynolds threatens to kill Brill and Dean if they do not give up the video.\u00a0 Brill refuses and Reynolds shoots him in the hand.\u00a0 Dean agrees to get him the video and tells them to drive to the restaurant owned by the Mafia mob boss.<\/p>\n Dean goes into the restaurant with Reynolds and some of the agents and using confusion between the video that Dean had shown the mob boss previously and the video that Reynolds wants, he gets the two groups into an argument that turns into a full-on fire fight.\u00a0 Reynolds, the mob boss and most of the gunmen on both sides are killed in the shootout.\u00a0 But Dean had hit the floor and survived.\u00a0 Brill escaped in the confusion and the FBI which had been monitoring the crime family shows up in time to collect the survivors and sort out the crimes involved.\u00a0 Dean is cleared of all the crimes he had been accused of and reinstated in his job and restored to his family. \u00a0Brill escapes to an island paradise to leave behind the world of espionage.<\/p>\n This movie is one long frenetic chase.\u00a0 But for the most part it\u2019s entertaining.\u00a0 Sure, there are some over the top sequences and some of the characters are a little thin on acting skill but the action sweeps you along and the predicament that Will Smith\u2019s character endures keeps your attention through all the running, jumping, hiding and seeking.\u00a0 And after what we\u2019ve learned in the last five years about the capabilities and lack of ethics at our intelligence agencies it doesn\u2019t seem far-fetched at all.\u00a0\u00a0Will Smith and Gene Hackman provide just enough old guy-young guy chemistry to provide some interest in their espionage mission.\u00a0 I\u2019ll recommend this movie as a full tub of popcorn\u2019s worth of thrills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back when this movie came out in 1998, before the 9-11 attack and the Patriot Act, the idea of the surveillance state having the wherewithal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[1875,43,38,1355,1474],"class_list":["post-17628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-gene-hackman","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-will-smith"],"yoast_head":"\n