Imagine a group of highly immoral top-level government officials with massive surveillance capabilities and they’re out to get YOU because you have something they want. Just like “The Terminator” and the “Energizer Bunny”, they keep going and going…
Now you know the terror that Will Smith’s Robert Dean character feels in this movie.
This is a top-notch thriller, frightening to watch because the surveillance capabilities are pretty much if not completely real. ‘Big Brother’ really is alive and well, particularly when you realize that our entire lives are computerized and up for grabs.
The story begins with Reynolds (Jon Voight), a top NSA official with a bug up his derriere (and everywhere else) to get Congress to pass a so-called Privacy Bill which really is a no-privacy bill allowing the government to surveil anybody at any time. He even arranges for the killing of a Congressman who stands in his way. The murder was inadvertently videotaped and the evidence falls into Dean’s (a labor union attorney) hands, although he’s quite unaware of it at the time. Reynolds finds out that his own glorious face is on the tape in addition to the dastardly deed and he gets his goons to track down Dean. Dean’s life is ultimately destroyed by the efforts of this renegade NSA group who make the whole thing into an elaborate game of cat and mouse. They stop at nothing to get Dean, including perpetrating another murder just to discredit him.
Gene Hackman plays Brill, a former NSA communications analyst, who knows all the tricks but is presently working as a Private Investigator on some pretty dicey cases. He unwillingly comes to Dean’s rescue.
No more story line to destroy your enjoyment of the film. It’s taut drama and Will Smith seems to have come into his own as a leading actor. Voight does ‘dastardly’ very well and Hackman is terrific as a snippy know-it-all. Lisa Bonet plays Dean’s contact to Brill early on.
Lotta says this one will keep you on the edge of your seat, but is very agitating when you think that YOU could be next. Scary stuff!