Enemy of the State (1998)

 Enemy of the State is one of those movies that I would come across while channel surfing then watch a few scenes, chuckle, before dismissing it and moving on to something more serious like a rerun of Laverne and Shirley or something. However, when teaching a film course, I had decided to show Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), which like Enemy of the State, stars Gene Hackman. The Conversation is a paranoia thriller with themes involving murder, betrayal, conspiracy, and invasion of privacy. It’s a brilliant film that seems all the more impressive when you consider that it was Coppola second best film that year behind the director’s other little-known work, The Godfather, Part II.

In researching The Conversation, I kept coming across comments about Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State being somehow an unacknowledged sequel, which I at first dismissed as downright stupid—then I thought about it a bit. Like The Conversation, Enemy of the State involves the specter of pervasive surveillance seeping into every fiber of our day to day lives. And, as stated, both star Hackman.

The overall cast of Enemy of the State is impressive with Will Smith at the center as well as then rising actors Seth Green, Jack Black, Scott Caan, Jake Busey among others, including the always reliable Jon Voight, an incredible actor who has fallen into the typecast of menacing WASP who does bad things for what he believes to be the greater good. Then again, maybe he was just playing himself. There is also the added bonus of major actors like Jason Robards and Gabriel Byrne appearing in what basically adds up to cameo roles.

The women in the cast include Regina King, who delivers an energetic performance as Smith wife although she is given woefully little to do, and Lisa Bonet as Smith’s ex-girlfriend and contact source, but her character provides more of a point of conflict than it does a person. 

Smith plays attorney Robert Clayton Dean, a regular guy caught up in a web of conspiracy. Smith’s talent has always been his relatability, and here it serves to help the audience connect with his character’s struggle against a den of vipers after unknowingly receiving a  McGuffin: evidence of a political assassination, which leads to him become the target of those assassins. Hackman’s reclusive “Brill” reluctantly helps Dean get to the bottom of the conspiracy theory, telling him, “It's more than a theory with me. I'm a former conspirer.”

Whereas The Conversation presents the idea of unwanted surveillance as a plausibly deniable fevered dream that we can convince ourselves is not happening, Enemy of the State just whips it right out. Everything you do is being observed somewhere through overhead satellites, phones, and bugs planted in your underwear. It’s a movie as a subtle as a jackhammer, especially with Voight playing (delightfully) the maniacal and corrupt politician, Thomas Brian Reynolds. Yes, while the film was directed by the blue filters addicted Mr. Scott, it has all the greasy fingerprints of its producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who has all the subtlety of a guy counting hundred dollar bills out loud while walking through a bad neighborhood. That said, there is a weird kinship between Coppola’s and Scott’s films if you’re willing to buy into the theory that Hackman’s Harry Caul from The Conversation has been going by the name “Brill” during the intervening decades for Enemy of the State, which makes sense give the paranoid themes of both movies.

And yes, I did reference Laverne and Shirley at the beginning of this essay because Cindy William has a pivotal role in The Conversation. And speaking of sitcom references, there is the bonus of a nude scene with Gomer Pyle’s Lou Ann Poovie (Elizabeth MacRae) as The Conversation’s femme fatale.

Scott’s film also gives clears nods to Coppola’s by not only using an image that is clearly Hackman’s Harry Caul for Brill’s profile photo, but there is also a scene set in D.C.’s Mount Vernon Square that mimics the opening of The Conversation—lacking only a mime. 

Imagining a kinship between Enemy of the State and The Conversation is like discovering that Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are siblings or that John David Washington is Denzel’s son (yes, I may be stupid) or that Tyne Daly and Tim Daly are sister and brother (I am definitely stupid). Yes, Tony Scott’s film might best be viewed as something like the love child of Coppola’s film—conceived through the passions of screenwriter David Marconi’s history with spy thriller and games between cats and mice and the emerging technology during the mid-90s.

It could be argued that Enemy of the State is too good looking a film to fully enjoy on a VHS tape and CRT television, which I would agree with. However, it is just not a very good film. Yes, Tony Scott’s film looks gorgeous even when seen through a limiting format, and its cast is enjoyable, and there are more than a few clever lines of dialogue. However, this just isn’t a good movie. Enemy of the State‘s violent and bloody ending is typical of 1990s thrillers, and I would be a hypocrite to complain about that alone, being that I am an avowed Tarantino fanboy, yet Tony Scott’s arrangement seems like painting by numbers. Yes, the tension between the corrupt feds in a gun barrel to gun barrel standoff with mobsters in the back of a restaurant rachets up the tension, but it feels like empty calories.

Looking at Enemy of the State as an unacknowledged sequel does add to watching the film, and I certainly may not have had any interest in sitting through it otherwise. It’s a dumb film, but it was fun to watch. Smith, Hackman, King, and Voight are absolutely captivating, so even without my excuse, watching it was not a complete waste of time. We all go through a bag of chips every once and a while and enjoy it.

The Hunter (1980)

Steve McQueen’s final film feels like a script that Burt Reynolds rejected. Much of the film could have been appealing but ends up as a pile of clichés and disconnected plotlines. It’s a very 1970s work comprising a series of vignettes about the protagonist’s bounty hunting exploits. It feels very much like a Hal Needham film, which is why it resembles a Reynolds’ movie or a Roger Moore Bond adventure with its disjointed storytelling.

The Hunter in a biopic based on the experiences of real-life bounty hunter Ralph “Papa” Thorson. The film opens with the very white Thorson showing up in a black neighborhood to catch a black bail jumper played by LaVar Burton. McQueen’s Thorson is a terrible driver who bangs into several vehicles while trying to park in that the neighborhood notably upsetting many of the residents. Hilarious. He is a caveman dropped into a modern world, a relic equipped to take on the dregs of society and bring them to justice. However, the biggest problem for the film is its lack of focus.

Within the plot is a completely unnecessary subplot about the hunter being hunted by a figure from his past, an ex-convict, Rocco Mason (Tracey Walter), whom Thorson was responsible for apprehending. Back home, Thorson has a pregnant girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold) who longs for him to put a ring on her finger. Harrold is given virtually nothing to do in her role as the character except complain and get kidnapped by the vengeful ex-convict.

Had the director Buzz Kulik focused on the exploits of Papa Thorson’s experience in tracking down bail jumpers, the movie would have been tolerable. I imagine that whoever produced the film believed that the whole hunter being hunted subplot was needed to stitch the vignettes together into an appealing plot.

Kulik's background includes a handful of B-movies, but he had mainly directed episodes of television along with several TV movies, the best known of which would be Brian’s Song, that delightfully sappy male bonding film about football, manhood, and friendship with Billy Dee Williams and James Caan. It’s hard to beat Lando Calrissian and Sonny Corleone.

Steve McQueen was an actor with strong screen presence whose earliest recognition came from the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which focuses, yes, on the weekly adventures of a bounty hunter. The setting of that show is the old west. The Hunter takes place in a contemporary, late 70s/early 80s, setting. There is certainly symmetry with his early and final roles. However, the knowledge that his performance in The Hunter was his last and not a particularly well-developed part leaves me feeling disheartened because such an important actor deserved a better exit. Still, McQueen is charming as Thorson even if the character doesn’t give him much to do. His understated method and lowkey humor cannot carry this film. As stated, this feels like a rejected Burt Reynolds movie, and that actor’s easygoing not so subtle mugging would have better served this material. That’s not an insult: those qualities made Reynolds lovable. What we loved about McQueen was his effortless coolness that was closer to Clint Eastwood’s style but dialed down a notch.

Unfortunately, The Hunter is not a very good film. What could have been an insightful and humorous depiction of life in a dangerous profession ends up being a misguided action comedy. The Hunter is neither a lost masterpiece nor bad enough to charm your socks off.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Sunset Boulevard is the type of film that I should have discovered by renting a video in the 1980s. As it turns out, I had come across a tape of it at a thrift store a few years ago, aware of the reputation and influence of the Billy Wilder classic while never having somehow seen the film is my five decades on the planet.

I had seen plenty of Wilder’s other works such as Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Double Indemnity (1944), and Stalag 17 (1953), yet I had somehow managed to avoid perhaps the director’s most influential film, which was a revelation.

There is no way to express how good Sunset Boulevard is. From opening with a dead man narrating how he managed to end up faced down in a swimming pool to its sharp dialogue and the uniformly strong acting from its cast that famously includes Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, and, surprisingly, Jack Webb playing the most cheerful character in the film, Sunset Boulevard simply builds towards inevitable doom with  strangely lighthearted glee.

Holden plays Joe Gillis, a down on his luck screenwriter, who manages to find what he believed at the time to be good fortune while attempting to keep his car from getting repossessed. Because of the opening, the audience is well aware that things will not end well for Gillis. What he believed to be his good fortune at the time turned out to be his doom: wealthy and delusional silent film actress Norma Desmond, played by Swanson.

The fact that I did not see this film until 2017 despite considering myself a film scholar is an indictable offense; however, because of the film’s influence, so much of it, especially Swanson’s fantastic portrayal of Desmond, seemed familiar, which I can say having watched The Carol Burnett Show growing up to thank for. Desmond is simultaneously sympathetic and frightening. She is a woman who has refused to admit that the world has moved on and the industry that made her famous for a time and wealthy no longer exists. At first, Desmond’s denial seems harmless and pathetic yet gradually become annoying and threatening. It’s a delicate turn that’s incredible to observe.

Holden’s Gillis, the victim, is a horrible person. Think about it: he avoids paying his debt, he ends up taking advantage of a mentally disturb person, and he attempts to steal a friend’s fiancé. He’s no angel and paid for that. Holden’s performance is charming and engaging. Sunset Boulevard is a sideways example of film noir, a category of crime film that focuses on the struggle of the human character to avoid temptation, which Joe Gillis personifies.

The black and white beauty of this film comes through no matter what format you decide to view it in. From shots of the lonely streets of Hollywood to the interiors of Norma Desmond’s haunted mansion, this film conveys a strange, joyful dread.

The influence of this film resonates through many other works. One film that comes to mind is David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), which plays on many of the same themes as Sunset Boulevard including the seductive and corrosive allure of Hollywood and how the main character, like the one in Wilder’s film, may be guiding us through the story from another dimension. Lynch clearly picked up on the macabre vibe of the earlier film and stirred in a healthy dose of the surreal. The DNA is certainly there.

My experience of watching this film on VHS certainly takes me back to when I would rent from Quality Video in Athens or Movies Worth Seeing in Atlanta, discovering Luis Bunuel, Akira Kurosawa, Diane Kurys, or Pedro Almodovar among many. It’s so strange that we laugh at the idea of watching anything in this format—and rightfully so—when it has been the vessel responsible for giving many the opportunity to see movies they may have never had a chance to see otherwise. Nowadays, if you happen to have a VCR, you can pickup a movie for a quarter or fifty cents.

On Deadly Ground (1994)

What is not to love about the possibilities of Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground? It not only stars Seagal, but he directed the film too. What could possibly go wrong? You name it.

Perhaps the most amazing fact about this film other than its director and star is the rest of the cast: Billy Bob Thornton, John C. McGinley, Joan Chen, R. Lee Ermey, and Michael Caine. Michael Caine. I have no idea of what state of mind Seagal was in during this period, but this seems to be a well-intended, socially conscious film with a compelling cast. Well, you know what they say about good intentions.

The premise of the film involves a big oil company attempting to acquire drilling rights from Native Alaskans or something like that. Forrest Taft (Seagal) works for that company, but suspects there may be shortcuts and underhanded doings going on. The company is willing to murder whoever gets in its way. Soon, Taft finds himself fighting for his life and ends up taking a spiritual journey where he must make the choice between enlightenment or the pleasures of the physical world. While I admire Seagal’s plea for environmental responsibility, his execution of those ideals doesn’t quite stick (unless you count his stabs a few of the bad guys with whatever he could get ahold of when meting out justice). It looks like the sort of film I would have made in junior high, using violence and power to make a point about enlightenment and harmony: an ill-conceived, immature comic book assertion on righting wrongs. Yes, we will show these callous business tycoons the right way by putting their heads on sticks. That sounds reasonable.

Watching On Deadly Ground on videotape was satisfying for all the wrong reasons. The story and direction were ham-fisted, but most of the actors seem to get that this film was not to be taken seriously and performed accordingly. This movie offers a ridiculous good time with Caine and McGinley blowing everyone else out of the pond with incredibly over the top performances, seemingly in a different dimension from Seagal’s stoic attempt at coolly detached mannerisms that just ends up in his typically ludicrous delivery—except, of course, when Seagal’s Taft inevitably disposes of both characters violently. Seagal apparently sees himself as some force of righteous nature but comes off like some cosmically charged high school bully who never quite learned how to connect with others. As mentioned earlier, Billy Bob Thornton is also in this film, and while his presence is essentially wasted, he still provides more charisma than Seagal could ever dream about.

This movie is just good, stupid fun and answers an age-old question: what if a homicidal maniac decided to become an environmental activist? Run, Forrest Taft, run.

The Prophecy (1995)

 The Prophecy is a biblical horror thriller starring Christopher Walken as Gabriel, an archangel who hopes to find the key to igniting a literal holy war that would eradicate humanity and place his kind back in their rightful place as the apples of God’s eyes. The only thing standing between our existence and Armageddon is a detective who is a former seminary student who had lost his faith.

          The film literally has a beautiful cast: Christopher Walken, Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen, Eric Stolz, and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer channeled through David Bowie.

          Overall, the film is a patchwork of horror fables ranging from Dracula (1931) and The Terminator (1984) to The Exorcist (1973) and The Golden Child (1986)—who pilfers The Golden Child? Wow. The get there before the bad guys do plotline involves something about retrieving the evil soul of a recently deceased Korean War colonel who is the key to the apocalypse and transferring that wicked spirit into the innocent vessel of a Native American little girl (Moriah Shining Dove Snyder). Yep.

          I admit that I love this movie for all the right and wrong reasons. Among the right reasons is that Walken is always fun to watch, especially as he chews up scenery as if his payrate depends on it. The second right reason is Mortensen’s androgynous Lucifer possesses both sexual charisma and menace that just pops off the screen—even a 27-inch CRT screen channeling 333x480 VHS resolution.

The wrong reasons for loving this movie? It’s audaciously stupid and recklessly fun to watch. It’s just stupidly inconsistent about its philosophy and execution. Are archangels immortal? Sure. Wait, no. They can sure do cool things like fly though, right? No. They do manage to get around except they can’t drive cars and need zombies to do that for them. What good are celestial powers if you can’t operate a can opener?

Slaughter in San Francisco (1974)

Slaughter in San Francisco is promoted as a Chuck Norris film, but he is neither the central figure in the movie nor in it very much. The main actor in the film is martial artist Don Wong, who plays Officer Don Wong, a San Francisco police officer who goes rogue against his department. So, while the Walker, Texas Ranger star is not really the star of this film, the real question is, how bad does a movie have to be to embarrass Chuck Norris (rumor has it)?

          Legend has it that Don Wong, the actor, replaced Bruce Lee, who had been allegedly set to star in the film had he not died. Although the film’s director, Wei Lo, had directed Lee in The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972), it seems doubtful that the icon would have ended up in something like this. Each of Lee’s films seems to be several notches above what we see in Slaughter in San Francisco, which lacks the charm and wit of the star’s body of work.

          The film is perfect for VHS with its 1.33:1 aspect ratio and ridiculous dubbing, including American actors like Norris, which provides the perfect argument for the existence of this blog. Rumor has it that there is a DVD with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and no dubbing, but who wants that? No amount of pristine cinematography or surround sound can cover up the stench of a dung heap.

          The plot of the film is your basic rogue cop cleans up a dirty system story. Officers Wong and John Sumner (Robert Jones) rescue a young woman from an attempted rape that she later denies happened. It turns out that her attackers are members of a criminal organization led by San Francisco crime lord Chuck Slaughter, played by Chuck Norris. Wong and Sumner’s persistence leads to the former’s suspension and the latter’s murder, leading to the cliché of the noble cop avenging his fallen partner. That’s about the only thing in this movie that you can really comprehend as the police captain (Dan Ivan) turns out to be corrupt and ends up paying the ultimate price at the hands (literally) of Wong, who ends up getting reinstated—how did Wong escape manslaughter charges at the very least?

          As badly put together as I found this film, it does ultimately work as a thoroughly 70s martial arts films that goes completely through the looking glass and ends up being entertaining for all the wrong reasons, including Norris’ ridiculously abundant body hair. Hey, nobody watches a kung fu movie for a riveting plot or nuanced performance.

 

My VHS Theatre

Back in the 1980s when I was in college at the University of Georgia and shortly after, friends and I would decide that we’d like to see a movie. We would pile into a car and head over to a video rental store, Quality Video, located across from the Dunkin’ Donuts and the Taco Stand on Milledge Avenue in Athens, Georgia.

We would get back to one of our places and watch films that included Lewis Allen’s Suddenly (1954), Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946), Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974) among others.

There are many ways for a film to achieve greatness. Spaghetti westerns were often awkward with voices dubbed in for both English and non-English speaking actors. This quirk ended up becoming part of the genre’s charm, like the martial arts films of the 70s with their even worse dubbing combined with delightfully ridiculous sound effect for fight scenes. A great film can be great based on more than its intentions or outward beauty.

VHS is not just a format but represents an important and influential period for film appreciation and film making. Director Quentin Tarantino has stated an affection for VHS, which is understandable since he considers that his time working at a video rental store provided him with the material and essence that formed his skills as a film director. He has also stated a dislike of Netflix and streaming films in general. Unlike, Tarantino, whom I consider a genius, this blog will not be agenda driven. I enjoy Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services. One of the main reasons I have decided to start this blog is that I have been able to pick up videotapes for about 25 cents at thrift stores because VHS is a defunct format.

For this blog, I will watch these films on a Daewoo 27-inch CRT with the Rosen RVP9800 VCP, designed for automobiles but plugged into that old television. As expected, the image nor the sound is very good, but the point of watching movies on a VHS is to capture the essence of the film and to not be distracted by the beauty of its cinematography, lighting, or sound qualities. It’s also reminds me of when I would watch films after midnight as a teenager, discovering the wonderful world of older movies that stood the test of time as well as movies so bad they went through the looking glass to become entertaining.

Essentially, I believe that watching movies on videotape forces a viewer to focus on the movie itself—the good, the bad, and the cheesy.