'Enemy of the State' delivers action, paranoia

Will Smith (left) and Gene Hackman star in "Enemy of the State," a new high-tech thriller from Touchstone Pictures.

"Enemy of the State" is a high-tech thriller that not only provides plenty of action to keep audience members entertained, but also gives them something to think about after leaving the theater.

The film by director Tony Scott ("Top Gun") stars Will Smith as Robert Clayton Dean, a lawyer who becomes entangled in a government conspiracy after an old acquaintance (Jason Lee) secretly slips him a recording of a congressman's murder.

The murder was carried out by Reynolds (John Voight), an ambitious National Security Agency official who wants to pass a bill that will expand his agency's authority to monitor civilian communications. The congressman had been opposing passage of the bill, so Reynolds had him eliminated in the interest of national security.

When Reynolds learns that the murder was recorded by a nature photographer (Lee), the agency uses its vast resources to track him down and kill him, but not before he passes the recording to Dean.

When NSA operatives learn that Dean might have the recording, they turn his life into a nightmare. In addition to tapping his phones, placing secret cameras and microphones in his home, cancelling his credit cards, and planting tracking devices in his clothes and car, the government operatives use vans, helicopters and spy satellites to track Dean's movements.

While trying to discover who is after him and why, Dean encounters Brill (Gene Hackman), a former NSA agent who has been living underground for many years working as an information broker. Brill reluctantly agrees to help the young lawyer elude his former associates.

The movie is fast-paced with enough gun fights and chase sequences to satisfy action fans, secret government conspiracies to placate paranoid "X-Files" fans, and enough high-tech spy equipment to appease Tom Clancy fans.

What sets "Enemy of the State" apart from "Clear and Present Danger" or "The X-Files" is its technical realism and credible depictions of how spy satellites, computers, wiretaps, and surveillance cameras can be used to track any citizen. With technology advancing at an ever-increasing pace, personal privacy becomes even more important in a so-called free society.

While most people who see this film may not leave the theater believing that the NSA is out assassinating congressmen, they might pause momentarily to look up at the stars and wonder how many of those little points of light are looking back at them.

"Enemy of the State" earns four out of five stars.

• Visit the "Enemy of the State" Web site.