Forced by cough n' cold to stay in on sat nite I watched through bleery eyes and snotrags the Hollywood film "Enemy of The State" on BBC1.
Now , I saw this when it came out and thought it an above average fairly cool Hollywood conspiracy movie action thing and thought nothing more.
However....post the september 11th atrocities (or 911, as I belive they are calling it T2 style stateside), the movie had a most disturbing resonance, something that Will Smith onboard or not, leads me to think such a script would not be made now.
The premise is that a bill stating the case for highly intrusive surveillance is trying to be put through the senate via the machinations of a right wing senator and the sinister covert National Security Agency. So far, so X-Files. But the chilling thing in context of these troubled times is that the reason put forward for such invasive sod the privacy tactics by what are put forward by the film as the BAD GUYS, is that America is the most powerful and richest nation on Earth and thus the "most Hated". So the huugely intrusive tactics that are proposed are given as a means of combating terroism and subversion on the home front so to speak.
So ya got Will Smith and Gene Hackman running around fighting for the right for Joe Public not to have a camera up his ass......and at the same time, you feel post 911 (September 11th....911 my arse) a large proportion of the audience would now be going......yeah the NSA are right....the Evil Senator is right.......stick that fibre optic right up my butt. Tell us what we need to know. Or am I just paranoid, hey, what's that on my phone......eeep!!!!
Was scary for a while I can tell you.
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