Enemy of the State

Fort Mead, Maryland, is home to the National Security Agency (NSA), a workforce with 18 underground acres of computers capable of tapping two million phone calls an hour. As a conspiracy thriller, produced by Jerry (Armageddon) Bruckheimer, this strives for the techno significance of The Conversation, although given the standard chase narrative, a closer model is North by Northwest. The MacGuffin is spelt out: to neutralise his opposition to the Telecommunications Security and Privacy Bill, a senior Senator is bumped off by rogue NSA agents. The deed is caught on amateur CCTV, and the evidence leads to the innocent pockets of attorney Will Smith. Hackman plays the grizzled recluse who talks us through the contemporary surveillance scene. Add Smith's lippy innocent and a host of subcontracted indie fresh faces, and you have the Bruckheimer formula: loud, lavish, seemingly efficient; over-large, over-long, over-plotted. Safe and sorry.