Enemy of the State (1998)

Mr Gains. Represents a clear and present danger to the national security of. The United States you have. No idea. What men? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Clear and Present Dudes. As usual, I'm Rory. I'm here with my friends Sonia Bjergsen, Mike and Mike Dunbar. Hello. And tonight Mike is going to lead us into some chat about the film that we're going to be discussing. Mike, take it away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the movie we're going to do today is Enemy at the Gates, the 2001 war film directed and produced and written by Jean Jacques Arnaud, based on the William Craig 1973 Non fiction The Enemy of the Gates.

The Battle for Stalingrad, starring Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weiss, Bob Hoskins and Ed Harris. Ron Pillman. Yeah, it's all about this. What? There's no mention of Will Smith in this this summary. Will Will Smith, Will Smith. Will Smith. Will Smith. Oh, did you mean? Did you mean enemy of the state? Of the state. The 1990. 80. No, right, okay, hang on. Oh fuck a duck. No, you're absolutely right. So you're right we are doing enemy of the state, the 1998 American political action thriller film directed by Tony Scott, produced by Jerry bruckheimer, Don Simpson and written by David Marconi who also wrote die hard 4 point O but never mind the will.

The film stars Will Smith as a labour lawyer becomes the target of a COVID surveillance operation after unwittingly receiving evidence of a political assassination. It stars Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Regina King, Lauren Dean, Jake Busey, Barry Pepper, Gabriel Byrne, a whole list of brilliant people from those guys. And that's guys and everybody. So yes, that is the movie we're going to do today. Enemy of the State, right? Cool. But before we do that, Rory O'Toole, shall we do our usual bit where we talk about the book you're reading at the minute by Saint Thomas Clancy?

Just to catch the listeners up briefly, I'm listening to Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon unabridged audio book. It's late here at Clancy where China starts ship with Russia, Russia joins NATO. The subreddit R slash non credible defence loves it. You probably need to let the government scan your face to read that though at this point. Because right now we live in a digital panopticon. Previous episodes have a pained at the slower pace of the book. Lots of conversations, lots of President Jack Ryan talking about politics and Catholicism.

We had we had sex scenes between CIA office at Chasta Namori and Ming. The Chinese Politburo secretary's banging. Shit's finally, finally lads getting real. There's an ongoing US diplomatic mission to the PRC and there's squabbling and posturing about tariffs and copyright law and stuff. And like the Americans are big mod, the Chinese are ripping off LPCS and stuff. And there's IP violations and this book's like 37 hours long and a major point of it's like fucking IP violations. It's crazy. There's this great sequence just before things start to get real, when the inner monologue of one of the American diplomats is along the lines of damn, I've got a fat ass.

These communist seats they give us to sit there are just too much for my colossal American dumper. It's it's metal. It all feels like Tom Clancy. No log. I give a shit at all. You know, when when like you're younger, you've got like right, like an SEO whatever, and it's got to be like 2000 words. And so you start buffing up with like where's and Y fours and a lot of useless extra fucking verbiage or at least added. So it feels like that a bit. It feels like there's a lot of just I'm Tom Clancy today feel like writing about a man thinking about his own ass.

Then shit gets real because we're going we're going with chapter called infanticide. In this chapter, Tommy C releases the hounds and it goes S real fucking quick. So, as I said before, among the many POV characters in this book, there's a husband and wife who are Chinese Baptist Christians. They've kept this wife's pregnancy secret because the first child got hit by a bus. In fact, the book makes a big deal about how the bus drove over its head because why, Tom? Why? And now they're making a second highly illegal baby.

The wife goes into labour at work. I should say, sorry. The plan is that they're making a baby in secret. They're keeping her off the radar as far as the hospitals and like the, the Chinese healthcare service goes because they know that they're violating like the one child policy. And anyway, so the wife goes into labour at work. She she obviously works at A at a shitty sweatshop factory, right? So she falls down on the floor in pain. A boss comes over and does like the best ever health and safety assessment.

Like it just stands over. I'm thinking OK so she's not falling from her height, she's not bleeding, looks like she's not tripped over or anything. Oh I guess she's pregnant. And then like does nothing but stands there like a fucking glitched out NPC until the husband arrives. The book at this point quickly mentions that he's ex forces. Now it needs to kind of manage expectations because he almost immediately fucking bangs our manager out. He just like squares up. The manager calls him like a little bitch or something and he just fucking decks him.

He takes his wife out to where the bicycles are parked. But now how is the novelist going to get a woman in agonising labour onto a push bike? Now either our husband puts her in the basket like ET or something or something lucky happens. And guess what? Something lucky happens. Or is it the security guy who's driving a fucking rickshaw around the place is X forces too? I think they've got that like inbuilt X forces radar when like guys of a certain age and immediately detect each other because they know that like the mad about the switch from 762 to 556 so.

He looked very SLR for a week and being up with fire again the. G3 was so listen right Miss Air didn't Goliath. Goliath didn't get killed by a sling bullet man that was that was a negligent discharge by a guy in two para with an SLR in 1974. Big bullet, son. Anyway. Speaking of negligent discharges, did you hear about that that standard side arm thing with AUS Air Force guy the other day? The P320, holy fucking shit. It's like literally killed. It's literally killed an American Air Force man and have you seen Sig's messaging on it for like this ends now.

This is bullshit. It's all lies. It's weak news. It's like it's not. It's not. I guess you could say they are sick and tired now. So anyway. As rickshaw buddy pulls up and he's like, hey, throw her on board. So they got in the back of this fucking rickshaw and they're going to take them home to, to the flats, which is like #23 great Leap Forward apartments or something. It's like it's, it's laying it on the plan, right? As I said, they have the baby at home. Hospital birth means in the book the baby's going to get killed as soon as it crowns.

So the security guy though sees how unwell she is and decides to be a good comrade out of working class solidarity and takes him to the hospital. There's nurses and shit there before the Baptist guy can get his wife out of there. And like for the hospital triages, the wife is like about to give birth needs scheduled for urgent full term abortion. And the dad's left freaking out in the hallway. So he he, he phones his pastor, a Taiwanese born Baptist preacher who has strong ties to some churches in the US and also his mate is the dad of the vice president.

You see where this is going? The Baptist preacher just happens to have in his house at this moment. Get fucking ready lads. The Vatican's papal nuncio previously mentioned a fat Italian cardinal who was the Pope's ambassador out of the PRC and also a part of the Vatican's intelligence network. And the Pope's exorcist.

Probably. I think this next guy might be the Pope's exorcist actually his assistant, a German Jesuit Monsignor and ACNN video news team, at least one of whom is a fucking ex marine. Do you see how all the pieces are coming together? And a bunch of them after after after the Baptist minister has taken this call. They're just posse the fuck out. They're getting the popemobile and the news van and rub out of the hospital. They let themselves in because fuck yeah. Unilateral actions, the news team following the preachers, papers and Protestants and lockstep to save the life of a baby.

And no writers have used subtext, and they're all cowards.

Wow, this woman is having quite the quite the struggle session. That's fucking right, man. The books narration barely takes a breath at this point. You see a situation fall apart in real time, which Clancy writes well. He does write it well, but there are a couple of moments when it does. So take a breath and gives the news team guys a moment to internally comment on how dog shit and drab the hospital looks.

And then right, the news team are through the doors of the maternity slash execution room like a SWAT team. Like the book describes them as moving like such now as as as a lapsed and non practising journalist, this gives me absolute fucking dopamine. But it's all so fucking silly. The holy man, kick the fuck off, right? The baby's just crowning a doctor's ready with a needle. It's like a bizarro version of the nativity. Someone grabs the doctor and heats it against the wall. The baby's almost out.

It's a police turn up right? And they're trying to start static with with the preachers and a big Italian lad former midfielder the book is clear about this fucking wades in and one of the cops literally gun whips him in the head but it has zero effect. It's just a big fucker. The German The German priests. In our mod log is literally I can't attack but I can defend, and the next thing he does is fucking grab a cop's gun while it's in the cop's hand and wrestles with him and Nunzio gets shot, gets mortally wounded.

The gunfire makes the baby pop out. Whoops. The baby is now a living citizen of the PRC and it can't be stabbed with a death jab. Oh yes, the Baptist runs over and catches it and then turns to square up with one of the cops, the baby in his arm. So they've already accidentally shot a foreign priest. Splash diplomat. The safeties at this point are all off and this Baptist gets doomed. Just the plane's blowing out, falling down on top of the Nunzio, the baby landing safely on their corpses, and CNN gets it all on tape.

My God that's insane. I just realised it and referring to myself as a lapsed and non practising journalist. That's absolutely a Clancy esque wave. Fucking describing myself, Jesus Christ. So yes, the bear and the dragon is getting absolutely insane at this point. Right, I suppose what we should do at this point in the pod is thank everyone for listening and I'd remind them if you could rate and review on Apple or Spotify, that'd be really helpful for us just to extend or or reach out to our audience.

And if you could subscribe on YouTube if you want. If that's the way you listen to it, don't go crazy. Just do it while you listen to it. I'm not not a dictator, but yeah, that'd be really helpful for us guys. Should we talk a bit about Enemy of the State and should we do that by listening to the trailer? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so, Julia, I'm going to finish up my Christmas shop and hey, do chicks dig? They're making the movie look a lot funnier than it is. Yeah, yeah, Every she's. She's a stick.

What about? This this shop. I'm sorry. Oh. Oh, she's way bigger than that. I mean, this is No, they put this in the trailer. Yeah. Help me.

He's ADC, Labour attorney. Take us around on the other side. Focus on the drop. Is it a tape? A powerful man has been murdered. Holy. A hidden camera recorded the crime. And none of this goes beyond us. We don't need any more promise to him. An innocent bystander. Are those my Christmas? Present in your dreams, buddy was given the evidence. We have reason to believe that Mister Zavitz may have passed sensitive materials to you. No, he didn't ask me anything. How did you happen to be at Ruby's today?

I was shopping for some lingerie. That's still legal, isn't it? For your wife? No, I was picking something up for myself. I do a little cross dressing on the weekends. Let's get into his life. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Take his wife and Kitty. Give it up for them. Target Switching direct by Tony Scott. Why are they after me? Two targets. You have something they want. I don't have anything. Immediate keyhole visual tasking. Target is on 21. Don't do this to me. Get. Out 19 I've been a law abiding citizen my whole life One day with you shoot, he's running, he's on your.

6:00. Will Smith certainly carjacked a really nice car.

You're either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid.

It's hard to remember because we were like, what was it, 1998? So what was I, 12/13 at the time I was. 15. So we forget, I think that that at this time, Will Smith was like probably the main bankable name in Hollywood at the time. Like like you could you could put Will Smith in a movie and and guarantee $150 million box office. Yeah, not yet. Right. So he's, so he's coming off the back of what? He's coming off the back of Men in Black Knight. Saw Knight 7. Or Black was 97. And then what he does is famously turns down The Matrix and then does Wild Wild West immediately after this.

But in between he does this rule. I think it's certainly his first rule where there's a serious performance without too many jokes and an actual dramatic thriller. I think everything else he's done before this has been an action comedy or an action something or a comedy something. So this is the first time that that Will Smith's really kind of stepping into a purely dramatic rule. And then what I guess we don't talk about a lot at the time is Gene Hackman's run. So Gene Hackman's come off the back of doing so.

This is what, 1998? So his run, like we talked about when we did No Way Out is just doing these movies where he is like a side character or a bar guy or a cool lead. And but he ends up but he ends up being up cast opposite like all these like hot young actors who like in 993 does the film with Tom Cruise. But he does his movies where he's like the side guy who ends up kind of overpowering the movie. I think after this movie he then does. I want to say the Royal Tenenbaums. He actually did Ants the same year he did Ants in which he played General Mandible.

So so it's so it's both, both films with a very anti authoritarian event to them. It's like Mr Hackman, welcome to the Resistance. Yeah, brilliant. I suppose the the key thing this movie is remembered for now is that it was eerily prescient. Obviously it it obviously predicts A surveillance state that that we now pretty much live in. And at the time it seemed a little bit far fetched. But I suppose what people weren't expecting was 911 to happen pretty much like three years later, the Patriot Act, prison legislation, all that kind of stuff.

So it could have been way ahead of his time. And I suppose one of the things it showed is the incredible capability of the NSA, which you would assume would make it like a movie that the NSA really, really like, but not so much they were not fans. I. I think it's interesting when we look at that because like intelligence agencies do kind of like to get films to cosign their public image don't and stuff like, I mean, as we'll discover as we go through this podcast and do all 170 something films that we've got lined up plus more, there's so many vehemently pro CIA films and this is not a pro NSA film in the slightest.

There's no one of any like deem ability within the cast of villains in this film. There's no like bad guy who wants to kind of stick to the rules and obey the Constitution and kind of have a kind of come to Jesus moment and become a good dude in the film, you know? Yeah, Jon Voight's character Reynolds is an ambitious guy who wants to become the deputy director of the NSA. But what he's doing at the minute is he wants to get a particular bill passed through the Senate, which is a telecommunications intelligence surveillance bill, which is going to make it much easier for the NSA to do its job by invasing the personal liberties of of every U.S. citizen, basically.

But to do that, he's killed another senator who was blocking that bill. And a tape has been discovered that was being recorded by Jason's Leigh character. Savitz. Savitz That's it. What becomes is a bit of a rogue operation set up by this guy Reynolds to to silence this guy, recover that evidence, type all the loose ends. So it's a bit of legislation get through and then he can get the promotion. He so so once and then his entire team just go along with it. And he kind of, he kind of says like this is a training op.

If anybody asks, this is a training op. But it's not a training op. It's it's a it's a, it's a coordinated campaign to terrorise somebody and commit a few murders along the way. But yeah, totally agree with your point. There are no redeeming good guys. And This is why the NSA didn't like it. And there was a a new director who came into into a position, a guy called General Michael Hayden. He made a judgement that the the organisation would not survive with the popular impression of the agency. I was being formed from this movie.

There was a Freedom of Information request to release any documentation relating to the prediction of this movie from the NSA archives. And whilst they were initially quite keen to cooperate and they were talking about how allowing NSA employees to be extras in the movie, allowing them to film the exterior of the building, maybe talk about getting an access at some point, that all went frosty calls when when this guy got involved, basically stopped that whole thing dead. And it got to the point where I thought need was photographed externally via helicopter of a public airspace and that was it.

And there was talks of employees trying to like sue the production as they were like filmed walking the car park. But that's not how public access laws in the US work. If you're out in public, you can get filmed out in public basically. On the flip side, and maybe we're going to head of ourselves a little bit here, but the CIA, we're quite keen to let them into Langley for the very end of the movie when when the CIA get involved. But we'll we'll come to that right by the end. But we're to see like an interagency disparity there.

In syndrome because you've because you've got like the rivalry in in no way out. You know that call back is is the CIA and the NSA kind of at odds in No Way out. Yeah, he's definitely, Bryce is the defence secretary working out, working out of the DoD, and he has his own people. And then they're trying to obfuscate the information from getting to the show. Yeah, aren't they? It's it's crazy to like look at these, these like American three letter agencies as these kind of little warring fucking kingdoms inside a great conglomerate.

It's it's, it's a bit mad. It's Patty dukedoms and fiefdoms. Patty, Patty fucking dukedoms and fiefdoms. It's like the world's best or worst game of Crusader Kings. The opening beats when you see the Republican politician, the only the only base Republican in the in in the swamp getting killed. For me, it's like you see these two older actors who were from a previous generation of films, a previous generation of thrillers involved in this kind of tete, a tete. And then like you see this, will that guy get fucking wiped out?

And there's all like the technological capture of it. And it kind of shows the shift between the days of films like the Conversation and this. Like it's like a kind of like epochal kind of change. You know, I think that's pretty fucking cool. And and and that's my little point about this. I also noticed that this the first film would do and when there's no real kind of maritime, nautical or riverine aspect to it, unless you count the Senators called the congressman's car being pushed into a lake.

That's that's the closest this film gets to seafaring. But yeah, no, you make a really good point about that first 5 minutes. So the first 5 minutes you've got Jason Robards is playing the senior senator or congressman, which exactly obviously he was Ben Bradley in All the President's Men. I think he's playing. Does he play the dying father of Magnolia as well shortly after this. But you've got this like Hollywood royalty kind of situation here in the scene with like John Voigt and it looks like something like from JFK or like again, like All the President's Men or the conversation, as you say.

And even even for a Tony Scott movie, it has that colour burn thing he does at the top of the frame, which he always did in this era. You'll see it like on Man on Fire and you'll see it on spy game and stuff when he does a serious shot. But apart from that, like it hasn't got the fast cutting or the OR the, you know, the phonetic camera movement that that the rest of the movie has. So it almost looks like a movie from a different time. Right up to stick him, stick him and push him into the river.

And then like from there it does the just the crazy like intrusive sequence of all the words flying across and the little crosshairs and the random surveillance footage and the they're like the inverted colour footage and satellite footage and all that. Kind of stuff and all the CCTV and Stafford to Wales, yeah. Yeah, that's it. And then bang, we're off to the races. It's Tony Scott here I am. Right? But but, but yeah, but first 5 minutes is like a different movie and you know, that could have been a good movie actually.

But but but this is a really good movie so don't worry. Yes, a brilliant movie. Yeah, good point, man. Right. So the other thing I was going to talk about, sorry, just from the surveillance state stuff at the beginning, extremely prescient for us in the UK right now. You've already alluded to it once. There is AID verification for the legislation that's that's come in in the United Kingdom which requires you want to access adults content to ID verify for the sake of protection. The children very controversial issue at the minute.

I don't particularly have too much of an issue with it myself right now except I suppose what you what you have is the whole Thomas Jefferson kind of thing of liberty versus security. And if you give away your liberty for additional security, you deserve neither. Or that kind of thing. I mean it's probably coming to Spotify soon. So hello people who are listening to us on Spotify, I hope you're using NBF RPN, not a sponsor yet. Yeah, I think they they make a point about talking about it in the movie.

So Regina King's character, Carla, she's there watching it on TV. She's watching like I think it's Crossfire or something, and she's calling up the government as fascists. Again, way ahead of her time.

But here's my counterpoint argument for the pair of you. Yeah. Does it actually soften our opinion about surveillance overall? Because it normalises it, it brings it into our home, oversells the NS as capability in the movie throughout. So anyone with half a brain will tell you like watching it. There's no way they actually have that ability to get a satellite to give them that information that quickly, sort through it, make it actionable intelligence from it and then act on it within like 2 minutes with a team full of one like 1 little OPS room of guys.

Another option movie, by the way. Yeah. And then I suppose the other thing, the other side of that is the movie has a happy ending. It all works out. All that intelligence was gathered. You were surveilled. But actually, we all came to the right conclusion at the end. So it's all right even though massive abuses of power happened along the way. Disgust. I mean, does it, does it show? Does it show the dangers of it or does it make it seem OK? Sanya, what do you think about that? Give me a moment to think.

I'm on, I'm on, I'm on standby. This is shit. Oh shit dude, that sucks ass. You're ready to throw on Fleckton at a moment's notice. No, just my silly little dictator costume with all the the gold on it. Yeah, you're moving away from Fleckton and moving to multi tonne now. Please stop. Reddit is in shambles. I am in shambles. Listen, at this point I am expecting to get a new uniform every eight. Just shoot me just I am supposed to be getting new flex Han later this year. It's like my own ballistic vests, an entire new set, wet gear, winter gear, everything new still in flex Han.

Then by the end of this year or the start of next year, I'm supposed to get a new utility uniform for the ship. And then in two years they're going to give us Multicam. Just shoot me. Where am I supposed to quit all this shit? What what? So is multi tonne just a fucking bridge to join join the the moribund masses of multicam? Yes, Jesus, moribund masses, it's.

The moribund masses of multicam. It's the Triple M baby.

I think in the context of like 1998, it does kind of allure your fears a bit, doesn't it? Because it kind of makes you think, well, this surveillance is bad. But the the then kind of said, oh, well, who's going to monitor the monitors of those who monitors people? And it's like, oh, there's going to be cheques and balances and it promises promises cheques and balances to be put in. And and also I think it has this kind of like the idea that the FBI are going to fix things because obviously the FBI present and are seen as seen as being a force for stability in the context of today.

Don't think a lazy affairs book is. Now, we know that you can't let move a keyhole satellite in a position like a moment's notice, but we do know that they can pull a significant amount of things about you. So yeah, I think contextually in 1998, it probably would have put people at ease a bit. And looking back through reviews of it, you can see reviews back in like 2012 saying that's OK, that's right. And then in 2025, people going like, holy shit, guys, here's how the NSA killed Tony Scott. So I just want to really quickly aside something here, Tony Scott from Northfields, Will Smith's characters in Newcastle, Coded man, Robert Clayton Dean, Two of his names are Streets in Newcastle.

Yeah, yeah. There you go, all connected.

Follow the money. Follow the Greg's pasties down the rabbit hole. I've got I've got one more for you then. I was going to save it for the needle drop section, but one one of the songs on the soundtrack is 6 Underground by Sneaker Pimps and they're from Hartlepool. Oh holy fucking shit. A bunch of bloody monkey hangers. Monkey hangers? Oh my God. Four people are not from the northeast. Monkey hanger isn't a racial slur. It's a reference to the fact that people from Hartlepool, allegedly during the Napoleonic period when a French ship was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool and the ships monkey survived, people of Hartlepool executed it believing it to be a Frenchman.

We had we had to community know that one there. Yeah.

This has been fact checked by real Northumbrian patriots as true. True.

So where we are in the movie, we've had the 1st 5 minutes, we've had the senator get murdered. What they don't count on is that the next day, when the OR later that day when the police are there trying to cordon the scene and some of his goons are there to check out what's going on, they spot on the other side of the lake a car come along and it's Jason Lee and he's taking a fixed camera away that had been there chasing out the film, putting under the digital SD card order into it to keep filming.

He takes it away. Yeah, because he monitors duck migration. Canadian. Yeah. Canadian geese migration. He's in nature photographer now I guess. Yeah, he's he's some kind of fucking pink or liberal whose entire job is to monitor migrating birds. Goddamn liberals. Yeah, so it's a really weird 1. So, so he immediately cheques the footage, sees what's going on, and then immediately calls the paper because it turns out, right. It's not clear in the movie, but it's clear in the screenplay that he is a lapsed and non practising journalist and actually he wants to.

And so he calls his old editor and then offers him the footage. At the same time as that's happened, the NSA we're going to beat on him and they come to to take him out. He makes a copy of the footage, leaves the original on his hard drive, takes the disc away with him and there starts the first major foot chase of the movie. Very frenetic 20 Scott powerhouse, just jumping between rooftops, running in and out of the shops, out through the back doors, doing that classic chase scene thing of running into some unknown interior location, just causing chaos and running through it again.

Love that, love to see that in the movie. And that's where he runs into, as we heard in the trailer, Robert Clayton Dean in a weird lingerie shop, Ray bouncing to him and they're old school friends or college buddies and they have an encounter. But that and. He's just an attractor. See, he's in the horniest lingerie shop of all time. This. This is not how normal lingerie shops are, right? I mean. I've walked through the lingerie section of of M&S before and at no point did like a straight New York 10 like approach me in lingerie to model the merchandise personally for me.

Like what the fuck? I hear it's the biggest lingerie section in Iron Father. No, it's not just like it's absolutely crazy. And then like she's like, oh, so So what size is shit? And there's just these, like, women cutting about in this, like, incredibly, like, skimpy lingerie. He's like, oh, guess. That one that. One like he's pointing to get them like he's like hurt your some women. It's weird. And then also how big are how, how, how, how big are ABS? Oh, way bigger than that. And like she's really pissed off and he's he's like, oh, did it again, idiot.

And it's this wildest. Like, I mean, this was the late 90s when thrillers were getting less horny, right? But then Gene Hackman signed on, and he's. Like, listen to me, gotta get some. It's an ass in this film. I don't need to be in the scene, I just need to see it. So all the bits there. So the, all the bits. So the the the bit that were the where the salesperson is like points to the chest and goes like what size? And then he goes what? And he goes what size bust or cup? And he's like, Oh, that because he's obviously was thinking, what size do I have?

Because she must be coming on to me. Like I I, I thought that was like a Will Smith adlib that I'd go in there. But the screenplay that I read this afternoon, which is like the Aaron Sorkin pass, uncredited Aaron Sorkin pass on the script, that's all in there. Yeah. Wow. I was like, what's the fuck? That was a paycheck for for Mr Sorkin. There there are some walking and talking scenes actually, so oh I. Was going to I was going to talk about some tribute, but the I don't want to like deviate too far from this, which is my favourite movement in the movie.

But but but like you you you would assume that all the Sorkin bits would be where he inputted all the all the amazing speeches. But there's another version that came after this, which I haven't read, which is a punch up by Tony Gilroy also incredited Tony Gilroy, for those who don't know, wrote pretty much all the Bourne movies has also famously did and or had a lot of successes at and or the last couple of years as the brainchild behind that Sharuna lead writer and director. I think of some of it and also with the movie Michael Clayton, but some of the best meaty speeches anyway that were in this movie.

Like the whole bit about Jon Voight. Reynold is like, I want to get into his life. I want to see what Porter rentals he has. I want to do that. All that stuff. No, that's in the screenplay, the pass by Sorkin. Like there's actually, it's really dialogue light. It's really an awesome man. So like, because, because I thought like the Sorkin stuff would have been like the more verbiage kind of thing. Yeah, compared to like if you get mad or something, you know? Yeah, yeah. And of course, then in the awkward scene that kind of serves as a like more more benign version of the woman's supermarket from fucking taken when when Savage runs in through the back door, the world's sexiest underwear shop, which seems like a major fucking like like risk that should be mitigated against.

Does any guy just run in there or just like kind of out flanking blind side these like attractive women not wearing much in the way of clothes. This is a major fucking risk factor, guys. Anyway, he gets in there and he he talks to Robert Clayton, who who who I believe, immediately gives him his fucking business card, right. That's amazing. That's incredible. And and then there's a bit of a like he does like a little sort of dead drop, doesn't he? Like he drops that that that that that media player with its Bigfoot off PCMCIA card that it's that it's saved on it.

It was bag runs off gets in sex and chase scene on a bicycle, which is filmed by by these satellites at the pulling to watch it and it's it's a brilliant chase scene. You know how much I love chase scenes. This is put together so well. I've seen a few comments saying also. So these guys who were, who were on foot can easily catch up on. Well, I mean, it's, I mean, it's like a city, you know, like, like, I mean, the use of a bicycle in the city is if you got on the streets or if you need it, like a burst of speed, you're not going to be going like wide open space cycle path speeds in the middle of, you know, DC or whatever.

And and and this is the second moment when my wife becomes the predictor of death in films because she she literally mentioned something about that senator being based for like standing up against this surveillance state, then getting killed. And then as fucking my name is Earl rides a spike against traffic, which he is really fucking cool stunt riding. I think it's really well put, like I've seen. And then immediately, just before he crosses over in front of a fire engine, she goes, Oh my God, this guy's so based.

And then he gets wiped out. So then like, you see, obviously he's been pursued and then he's just saying got wiped out by by by a fire engine. The film does not mess around. And then you see just the same great, like footage of his corpse scene, scene from space, scene from satellite. It's like, it's like it's the cold fucking surveillance state. We'll watch you bleed out from like thousands of miles above you. You know, I think it's pretty cool. That's cool. It's cool they filmed it back then as well because it's true and by nowadays you could do that quite easily, withdrawn footage, but back then they would how to do that all that would probably with a helicopter or something.

The whole city must have been a mass of helicopters for a significant amount of the filming. I tried to count up how many, how many shots of helicopters we saw in this movie. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. There was just too many. I can tell you how many of the times they appear in the screenplay and it's like like 5 maybe Max. Whereas every single chase, every single bit of surveillance, there's a helicopter like over the location constantly in the information. Yeah, you don't get any of that in the in the screenplay.

I. Mean that digs in what kind of 1990s kind of paranoia just like the symbolism of helicopters and stuff. Work with me here. Back then like the 90s you had people talking about things like black helicopters, unmarked helicopters. That awesome song by Sewell Coffin, one of the best tracks from The X-Files soundtrack album songs in the K VAX. And the idea of like government black helicopters was something that was a real kind of kind of scare point for people in like the conspiracy theories fear.

I do remember because I was an early adopter of things like this and I was reading 14 times from being about 13. So. So. Yeah, high, high NSA. So yeah, like, I I think the concept of like a helicopter surveilling. Yeah, was was like scarier thing back then than it is now. Big time. Another thing that is not in the script so much but appears in the movie is the surveillance of Van, which appears a couple of times in the script. But the the little mobile OPS room, which is staffed at all times by Jamie Kennedy, Seth Green and On and Off by Jack Black is yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they so they are in, they are almost the Greek chorus of the film. They are, they are, they are, they're on every, every single one of these encounters. They are constantly delivering a position, Seth Green often yelling it at the top of his lungs. I remember you mentioned that you quite like that as a as a concept, the concept of having three ordinarily comedic actors take a relatively serious part in this movie, just yelling at exposition and just generally kind of getting in the way of stuff.

Made me think of this quote from him and Hess, which was if you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. And I thought it was like 3 goofballs just sniping in from the sidelines, but what's going on? Balls with headsets. Who the fuck are these guys getting in the way of my movie? Yeah, it's that that's actually incredibly fucking insect. I love it. I really enjoyed the casting. People like Seth Green, like Jack Black because he's amoral Dick heads who are pretty unfunny in the rules.

I believe there's like just one kind of Jack Black joke in which and even that it's just him being weird and pervy when he's talking about the housekeeper says, oh, she doesn't shave her legs. That's the kind of woman I love or something. And it's like they've they've they've done something really cool and they've cast these comedy actors to be absolute Dick heads and to be horrible people. And so Reynolds is obviously the villain of the piece, but he couldn't do any of it without these incredibly will and hench men who were total, total scumbags.

Like these these guys are scumbag mode dressed up in spanky hair. And I think it's meant, I think it's actually probably holds up as a casting decision better now than it may have then. I agree. Yeah, like, I mean, I mean, Seth Green at this point had been in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for what, maybe a couple of years? It's that. No, actually he in. Fact. I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer starts like, yeah, I think Buffy. The Vampire Slayer released on the WB in 1997. So by this point, he's he's been on our screens as, you know, like the kind of lovable, dorky, nerdy, kind of nice guy role.

And and then he's just a sinister middle manager who's very happy to like coordinate the destruction of people's lives, existence and social standing. I think it's class. Yeah, he's done some stuff as a child actor, hadn't he? He'd. Yeah, some. Some Stephen King. I can't remember. Which one was it, Stand by me? I can't remember. And me seem to have like a significant amount of people in it who who then went on to be quite famous. So oh. No, no, sorry. He was in, he was in Stephen King's eight. He was in ATV movie of Stephen King's 80 right?

He he was in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The the film in 1992 where you played a vampire in it. Holy shit. That's why you only seem like 11 scene I think. He played Scott Evil in Austin Powers. Yeah, Yeah. So Seth Green, Amy Kennedy, Barry, Barry Pepper being just incredibly sinister. And then I saw a comment saying that that had comedy casting of Scott Carn. I didn't really think of Scott Carn as the comedy act had before. He was his neck fucking big in this film. His neck is gigantic.

That first scene he appears in, he looks like the guy from Cannibal Corpse. It's ridiculous. He never skips neck day, that guy. Scott Scott Scott would be really funny in the Oceans series. He. Was really, really funny in the Oceans films, yeah. We should come after this, but he's not playing in this at all. In fact, this this movie is great for are they like a great cast of goons like it is the Olympics of goon squad. So team, team goon are are taking like all the golds. It's it's the Gooning Olympics.

And now, representing in the United States of America and the Gooning Olympics, it's Jake Bussey. Exactly right. So Jake, Jake, Jake. She's there from like startup troopers of a great movie goons. Tom Sizemore in an uncredited role. UN fucking credited. Uncredited One of the main characters that drives the plot of the movie is Tom Sizemore. He's unaccredited as the mobster. Eat your food, Uncle Paul is going to take you to the zoo. 4th of July Best day of the year. Barry. Barry Pepper, who as we as we all know his dads all know is the is the cool sniper from Super Private Ryan who gets whacked by the Panzer, but was also in Battlefield Earth.

Oh, what's the the other main guy who's one of the goons who's got a massive role actually in the screenplay, but he's had all pretty much all his lines cut in the actual movie. Lauren Dean, that's Hicks, who's in Apollo 13 and Gassica into the bits and bobs. But he's just a standard goon in here. He's one of the ones that works in the NSA building reporting to rails directly. Yeah, Ian Hart, the guy who does the initial detection of of Jason Lee gets bashed up in the in the car crash. And there's the one who's like, yeah, I'll gift wrap your blender for you.

That guy that. Guy Yeah, the Blender. That subplot's brilliant. He's English, she's from Liverpool. But yeah, no great, great, great goon cast that's ever good watch.

By the way, Gooning is actually up for grabs as the potential youth word of the year in Germany. Amazing Boom barely scratch the surface of the film at this point and it's just there's so much to talk about. This film's amazing. This film's what, 2 hours and 13 minutes long? The YouTube versions I think 2 hours wasn't 6 minutes long so something cut out with that that probably is related to the NSA. So I watched, I watched the full version of it on my friends Disney plus. Shout out to Jen from Syracuse, friend of the show.

He lets me log into a fucking Disney plus. Shout out for this. We've got so so got. My name is Earl gets killed and then Robert Robert Clayton Dean goes home with with the bag with the Mcguffin. He comes back to seeing his wife calling American politicians fascists, which again is really spot on. This this this film is and half half of the reviews on on letterbox the like yeah, this film tells the future and it does it does yeah. Then we'll witness like a bit of bit of happy home life for them as a son and a son's friend, as a son's a total cool kid, by the way.

Like in like the final scene with a son, he's reading a White Dwarf magazine. So his son's a Warhammer nerd and like, yeah, well, do what I did, Warhammer mentioned. So I'm like, I'm like sitting up straight in my seat after 2 1/4 hours of film go, that's a fucking White Dwarf magazine. There's an there's an elven fucking War Eagle in it or something. It's like, holy shit, that's advert for games day. Holy fuck. Yeah. Warhammer mentioned so he goes back to his family and at this point you've got like all the kind of investigation that's kind of unfolding like behind him.

Isn't it like starting to track him at this point because like the searching up the movements of zavits the find the footage of them from from inside the lingerie shop just without any kind of like oversight or requests or anything or so say can get the CCTV from that shop. It's got half naked employees. There's no forms to fill in. There's no wait, there's there's there's no run a bike committee. And so they get footage. They are pretty confident there's that it's been handed over. They even do a bit of generative AI don't know when they're like, Oh, can the camera show the other side of the bag?

It's like, well, it can estimate it. And and then like they do kind of generative AI like show that it's that it's possibly got a bulge in there. I mean, they didn't really have to because like they can see someone put something fucking in it. But but it does eerily predict the future of AI in trusting AI to make decisions. I had this down as the most egregious of a cell of the military industrial complex. The the fact they have the kit, this technology, which is essentially that that funk, that weird funky camera from Blade Runner where they can they can go like, Oh yeah, just change the angle on that zoom in enhanced.

Like, yeah, that obviously doesn't exist. The two things are wrong with that for me personally. One, they don't apply anywhere near the correct levels of military judgement to the veracity of that information. Only Jack Black keeps piping up or nothing. Could be nothing. And everyone ignores him. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, they just take it at face value as well. And the fact that they can do it so quickly, it's just, it's just crazy. But yeah, that's true. That's true of everything in this movie there.

I've, I've, I've got some opinions on all of ourselves as well that we'll go into when we're, when we hit the correct point for that as well, because I've, I've got them queued up and ready to go. They're locked and loaded. So yeah, they then start like Seville them as I said, like they send the goons to his house after quickly putting together A-Team, which includes the CJ Busey and Scott Kahn, who who I believe are they like described as ex special forces or something. They're U.S. Marines who have just been.

Oh, right, Marines, Yeah. I think they've been released out of military prison early because they banged out their gunnery Sergeant and probably because the Bucky Sergeant. The Army's crap, I guess. That's the Army's crap.

So, so Scott Kahn's like, he probably made a joke about neck sizes. Well, that's it. So it's like he's like, what's it? Because Scott, he's got certifying pipes up. He's like permission to speak soon. With all due respect, the gunnery Sergeant in question was an asshole system like. These are the updated 90s version of Contra One and Contra 2 from No Way Out. Big time, yeah. So they send him around to his house. This is in addition to the screenplay. So what they do here is he pays a visit of the house first and then they get kind of thinned out, then they stage the break in and then they plant a bunch of stuff.

Which is a pretty cool bit of right. And I think like it's cool how they kind of are zoom, zoom in on the watch charts and Omegas zoom in on the pen. It's a parka, that kind of thing. It's brand, brand, brands mentioned. Yes, Yeah, yeah, there's. A5 bit of product placement in this film as well. So in the screenplay makes more sense because they have the break in and then they come in to view them after the break in. I see. So yeah, they do that. They have the break in so they can start procuring replacements that are already ripped with bugs and tracking devices and so on.

It's just tracking devices actually, isn't it? And the next day he goes off to his ruin club, does a bit of Ruin of Potomac, and then they break into the changing room, swap out all the gear and then leave. And then from there, I think that's when the wheels start coming off, isn't it? The papers have a story already. Yeah, because. Because there's the. Yeah, because there's the plot with Rachel. Who? We haven't even talked about yet. Yeah, we've talked about Rachel's importance to the film. She's obviously a key player because she's the she's the contact that he's paying regarding the mob trial and the tape that exists of Tom Sizemore's incredibly sweaty Italian lobster union boss breaking his rule I think by by hanging around with union members and stuff.

Robert Dean's like an anti union Labour lawyer, yeah. That's right, yeah. He's like, so fucking close, man. You're almost there. But yeah, so she's kind of involved with him. And so far as he's paying her for information, there's a great scene of missed when he's Will Smith. Howard has introduced by having to meet with those clients of his and someone's oh God, these damn guidos and he's like, oh, you can't call them that Italian Americans. Then 5 minutes here, he's like, let's get these Guido motherfuckers.

It's like and he's and he's and he's not scared of using slurs because I believe it's not the same scene when someone uses the term shy star lawyer and he takes offence at it because that's because he's like, this is a term used to to denigrate Jewish members of my profession. As an African American, you should be calling me an eggplant. It's like.

It's like I fucking love that scene because it's letting Will Smith be funny, which he genuinely is a funny guy, while still being serious. Smith does really well on this movie to resist some of his comedic impulses. He doesn't really like because he is a really funny guy, but his comedy rhythm, if you like, is like, he tends to be really big and kind of overact a lot. I know he he can. Well, obviously this movie demonstrates he can put a leash on, but he still lets a few comedy lines get out without without hitting that that pitch.

There's a bit later on the movie where he's getting handed different outfits from like Gene Hackman's wardrobe because that's all he has available to him. And he asks, he goes, Oh, he gets handed a shirt and he goes, Oh, can I have another shirt? And he goes, can he hands him like a Hawaiian shirt? And he goes, actually, no, you can take that back. He's like, what? That's my best Hawaiian shirt. It's like, well, you can say Aloha to that shirt and then there's waves to it, but he does it just at that pitch and you can just say Aloha to that shirt instead of like a bigger delivery.

So yeah, it's really cool that you get to do that in this movie without keeps it keeps it kind of like bouncing along and light, but doesn't like turn it into like Beverly Hills Cop 2. And I mean it already done like the kind of comedy action thing in Bad Boys. So like obviously in Bad Boys he's like funnier. He's more off the chain. He's more he's more kind of unleashed. And yeah, he like he like dials are back masterfully here. I do think it's an absolute banger of a Will Smith performance. Not going to say it's best, but it's certainly really good.

So the next sort of 20 to 30 minutes is Robert Dean getting on the massive back foot. He's basically falling into every step of the trap they're laying for him. So he's wearing all the trackers they want him to wear. He's he's arranged a meet with Rachel Banks in person. Lisa Bonet, by the way, we haven't mentioned that yet. My God, just great in this movie. So arranged as a personal meet with her, which is exactly what you wanted to do and says over the phone exactly where it's where and when it's going to be.

So they, they photograph it, they send the pictures straight to his wife. They cancel all these cards and everything. They basically get him into like a rat and a trap for like 30 minutes. And it's actually pretty, pretty thrilling to watch. Like like to watch. You get like, how is he going to get out of this? Like he's just getting deeper and deeper and deeper into it. It's annoying because like the first, I'd say the 1st 20 minutes of the movie are a little bit slow. I just kind of wish that like Jason Leigh got pancakes about like 5 or 10 minutes early I suppose where where it starts to turn I guess is where he starts to seek more information by trying to arrange a meet with Gabriel Byrne's character.

Which is brilliant because the Gabriel Byrne bit, I'd say obviously another amazing actor with a storied fucking career playing a relatively minor role. So he believes that Gabriel Byrne's on his side, right? But he's not. I mean, is Gabriel Byrne in cahoots with the NSA in this film? Because as actions are weird, he removes one of his tracking devices, just one. He gives that information about Brill when he says, oh, Brill's, Brill's dead. Brill's buried in some field. He died of polio or cholera or something at age 2.

So he's kind of given a bit of information to say, oh, like, is, is, is. No, this is like a fake ID, fake identity this Brill guy has or whatever. Which is kind of misdirection I guess, right? But Brill ends up chasing Will Smith and Gabriel Byrne down, doesn't he? And Gabriel Byrne pulls a gun on him. Gabriel Byrne has no interactions with the NSA guys in in the film at all. I don't know if the the screenplay explains what's going on. Is he just reprising his role in End of Days and is he actually Satan just kind of hanging around?

It adds almost no level of the film because what is he to to this film to this story? Is he some some some freelance counterintelligence guy? Is he someone who's subcontracting to the NSA? He doesn't appear to have their kind of methods or their kind of high tech push behind him. He's just a guy in a taxi. Who the fuck was that guy? Yeah, so that screenplay just has him down as Brill in inverted commas, Right, Right. Yeah. So what the screenplay does say, OK, is Dean goes to the ferry where? Which is like the meeting point, which he'd already discussed with Rachel, but where to find Brill, because he does a drop at like, noon at a ferry place.

Whatever. He waits there. You've got a voice over from Rachel, which is like her basically recapping what they've talked about kind of thing. It ends with the stage direction. Dean's alone now. The ferry docks for the night. The last passengers, 2 nuns, disembark. Dean rises to go. Rules and no show. Internal ferry terminal at night. Dean walks down the ramp. It's dark in an empty terminal, Not the best place at this hour. Up ahead two men stand the darkness then kissing down another hall sounds of nearing footsteps.

Dean detours into men's room continuous and then that's when he gets confronted by Gabriel Byrne. Just as the real Brill Gene Hackman says later on, like did he tell you he was Brill or did you give him that information and did he run with it? And that's that's kind of implied in the screenplay. So I think I think he is working with the NSA. He's definitely dodgy. They they can track him they can find out what he's doing and they kind of know the content of that conversation. They obviously heard all the entire conversation with Rachel.

So they've, I think they've set that up other combat indicators that you're right. So yeah, the screenplay's slightly different from what happens in the movie. The screenplay, he removes the device from his his boot and then he in this, he puts it into the potato chip proper and then pushes the potato chip proper down the toilet again, destroying evidence. I would say when we get, when we get to the real Brill later on when he starts taking the tracking devices off of off Will, he obviously preserves them and keeps them for later.

And. Doesn't destroy them. So then we have the meat, I suppose. Finally, after after all that happens, Will's still on the run. Will Dean is still on the run after the the taxi crash so I guess the taxi that Gabriel Burns driving gets T boned by a Chevy. It's been chased down by by the actual real Brill. That's right. Dean gets out of the the cab, runs away, We don't see Gabriel Byrne again. We presume he's maybe dead. And then eventually we have the meeting between Hackman and Smith and they finally start talking, but they're not like pals straight away.

That's another thing I really like about this movie is that they are kind of loggerheads for a while, so. Chambers and what they don't mean federal agents you had following you on that ferry. Who are you working for? You're talking about I'm. Not worried. Is this about me? Am I at Target here? Do they know me? Who is Daddy? Do they know me? I don't know what you're talking about. Either very smart or incredibly stupid. Get off. So a man like Brill has spent the last like 15 years working out of a Faraday cage in an abandoned building somewhere.

I think it maybe it's like off Baltimore somewhere. See. It's Baltimore, Yeah. He is an incredibly paranoid person. If you if you, if you kind of take the movie as as the spiritual sequel to the conversation, you can imagine this guy is like 2 little paranoid about the surveillance state and he is living way off the grid. So to him, this whole thing is like just some mega Roos to try and catch him, right? And I like that. I like that he doesn't immediately trust him. They have a bit of back and forth and it takes a while for them to kind of develop a rapport and start trusting each other.

Not until quite a lot later in the movie, after Will has unfortunately brought the NSA down on on Brill's hideout, which he calls The Jar. And even before that, Will Will Smith and and Ellie Colin, Gene Simmons, that Gene Hackman. Can you imagine this from a fucking Gene Simmons and Gene Hackman role? That's the entire of the story. It's like just Gene, Gene Simmons trying to be low key with like his make up and just sticking his massively long tongue out and multiple opportunities. Yeah, of course, that kind of real detonator kind of sequence is during the incredibly chaotic hotel scene, right?

The whole chase through the hotel and stuff like that. So they are they are kind of getting to know each other as as this makes your connection OK. You and Sunny are both black screens now. Mine's mine's good. Hotline's fine. I can see you too. Yeah, I see. You can see us all failed to start camera. Yeah, I've got you. It says failed to start camera Lads, the NSA is out for us. I've got you visual and audio. Yeah, same. You're very clear and present. I'm not sure I believe that. Ads. This is how this is how the fucking alphabet boys get.

Oh yeah. So obviously there's that amazing, amazing, amazing whole sequence of scenes in the hotel when he's gradually stripping the tracking devices out of him. He he removes the other one from his shoe. He gets the other one from from his pen. He tells him to throw away the watch that he got from his wife. But obviously he's not the one he got from his wife because it's the one that they've replaced with a bug. He's up on the roof in your phone with AGPS Sat tracker. Pulse is a 24 gigahertz. I don't know what that means.

It's like a LoJack, only two generations better than what the police have. And what does that mean? You speak English. Obviously not that well. Kind of a jerk, aren't you? It means the NSA can read the time off your fucking wristwatch all. Right. Nothing is bullshit right now. You either shoot me or tell me what the fuck is going. On that gets thrown off, there's the helicopter involved and then he has to get the one out of his trousers which involves him going into that hotel room with the elderly Japanese family and doing doing a bit of a striptease, which is brilliant I. Love that bit, that's so good.

Which is absolute, absolute 1990s chaos. It's amazing. She immediately gets out a bundle of ones as well like she's about to tip him. It's amazing. She's going to start making a Rain Man. It's there's this excellent scene when he's seen the opposite of Guy, who's monitoring his movements. Oh, he's always going up. He's in the elevator kind of thing. And the kind of directing the goon squad to come and take him out, he ends up kind of in the hotel cleaning closet that catches fire and and is rescued by by firefighters And and that's just all a set of brilliant action set pieces that.

Don't put a foot roll. Yeah, no, that's great. That's the average, average shot length. That's like 2 seconds. But it's it's wild. It's frenetic, but you don't lose geography of what's happening. I really like that you know exactly where he is in the hotel. You see him getting down like the IT also has one of the best bits of the three that I'm going to call him the the three nerd Greek chorus, which is Seth Green. When he jumps down from the 16th floor to the 15th floor, like he has this nice little delivery of him being like kind of incredulous and impressed.

He goes like, no, he's on the 15th floor. He's just jumped out. He's on the 15th floor. He's like delighted. He's like delighted at what's happened. It's so good. You do get the impression that these guys have some good job satisfaction. The Goon squad. Yeah, yeah. Like, they enjoy the job. Fucking Jack Black loves his job in in in the film and he's very excited to be around women who don't shave the legs. Zach Black on more than one occasion requisitions of satellite before he's been allowed to just so he can go already done it, Sir it's.

Wild, right? There's zero fucking oversight. I love it. Then we'll see them making their escape. Will Smith's character makes the mistake of making a phone call from payphone at the garage to stop at. Now contextually, looking back at film making from the 80s and 90s, I think the fact that the tapped into a payphone to listen to him is more shocking and surprising to a 1990s audience. Because when you look at films like No Way Out, when Yuri is using a payphone to speak to his handler, the kind of orthodoxy and thriller storytelling at this point was like, more or less payphones are safe.

So like the fact that he's picked up like instantly, instantly using using a payphone is probably more surprising to a 90s audience than it is to like a few nights ago. And I'm like, Oh yeah, of course, fuck fucking course it did, right. They've got like, they've got like half of this by satellites in the Western Hemisphere and now following this man and you know, the NSA can read the time off your fucking wristwatch. Well now the can they're just hack in with via Bluetooth. Topical. Yeah. Then they end up at the Faraday cage base that he has as cats introduced.

It's always nice to see a cat representation in a film as a cat dad loving. A cat in the. Movie Babe the Cat one of. The unrealistic things that happens in this movie is that Will Smith puts Babe the cat into a small hole or and the cat just lets that happen. Yeah, the cat's just absolutely cool with it. It's like that, that that would not happen. Ellie would go fucking Abe. Shit, I'd be running after that fucking shouting at a caller and get a bimbo and telling her to get into the bag, you know?

Because the cat would. The cat would get into the bag on its own terms. But if you put the cat in the bag, it's like no wide mode engaged and then just like this. I mean, but maybe the cat's been given extensive training, Maybe Brills, maybe Brills got like a lot of experience in training cats. I would do. Get Babe in the go bag now. Babe in the go bag now. And like, the cat's ready. The cat's like fucking strapping on like a gun belt with a sidearm. It's like a bandolier of 40 grenades. You know, it runs over out of the M79.

He's got on the corner and it's like it's head button it he's like that's not the time. We don't need to allow just yet, babe. Incredible, incredible scenes. We need walk paths of espionage, then the the escape as the goon squad are on top of them. There's the line. What the hell is? Happening. I blew. Up the building. Why? Because you made a phone call, which which people talk about as being one of the best quotes of the film. But I think, well, it's good. The film's got some bangers that are way better than that.

Yeah. You argue. Yeah, it is good because, like, it shows just how willing to go scorched earth on everything Brill is because that's how he survived. Like, he's like, he's. Yeah. Don't get attached to something that, you know, you can't run out on in 30 seconds if you get hit around the corner. Yeah. Yeah, I could never not be attached to a cat though. And he's attached to babe. He can't abandoned the cat, you know so. He lets Will Smith into the car when he shows he has Babe.

It's like, listen, motherfucker. Then there's this excellent chase scene with the trains and the driving between the trains and you've got a gunfight when Will Smith's shooting the other vehicle with a shotgun and it's like, yes, it's class. Every chase scene in this film I think is really well choreographed and they put together with really creative kind of ideas and themes behind them and stuff. There's great moments of tension in it and it's it's it's exciting. And that's that's my opinion of that particular chase scene.

Another cool thing about that is Tony Scott. The next movie he would do after this would be Spy Game. Both of these involve him blowing her building just to kind of make a point in an action sequence. Yeah. And I've never. And it works. It works both times. Like you're like really impressed. It's a really good demolition. It's amazing. I'm going to dive in again and tell you something that changes between this and the screenplay. This chase sequence involving the train yard. It kind of happens, but much later in the movie.

So the next thing that happens after this bit in the actual movie we were watching, as they regroup, they have that conversation about how, you know, like the Viet Cong, we've got to use our weaknesses and strengths to our enemies size and slowness against them, even though they're even though they're not slow, but fine. Well, they they do that and the way they do that in the screenplay and it's not as good as the movie actually, to be fair, is similar stuff. So they they set up a bunch of buggings that can then be easily unveils.

And because the tech they're using is the same tech that Will's been done with already, it is super advanced, therefore only NSA held. So therefore it implicates the NSA for doing the buggings, which brings some heat and light from other government departments onto the NSA and the and the senator, he wants to get this telecommunications intelligence gathering surveillance bill passed through the House. All that happens is the main effort for the rest of the movie and then right towards the end, Reynolds guys as a last ditch attempt to try and stop it on its tracks as they send, they kind of call the police in or the police get called in after a break in at, I want to say Krista, which is the mistress of the senator's apartment.

Yeah. So they, the police had called in on there, which is I think the location that Will Smith was watching the meet from in the movie. But it's really unclear that there's a pursuit that police follow. Brill and Smith are in a car just like in the previous scene. They're driving around some back alleys. There's a train station and train lines and cargo trains adjacent. And what happens is they try and make a final jump to get away from a police car to clear a small wall by using the the ramp off the back of a flatbed.

They go over their time, but it's not enough. They crash car gets absolutely totals. Hackman is like bleeding out and dying in the car. Dean manages to get out of the car. Smith might get out of the car in so doing because they've crashed into like a train car full of coal. A load of coal floods into the car. So now the car is like full of like leaking petrol and it's full of coal as well. The police roll up, some of Reynolds goons immediately kill the police and they start like looking in the the boot of the car because they still mistakenly believe that they have the tape.

Dean's making his escape. So in order they're about to shift tack away from the car and start pursuing Dean and trying to kill Dean. And in order to prevent that, Gene Hackman's character presses the cigarette lighter in the car causing it to immediately explode and kill the goons. Which is bad ass as fuck, but but that that is not in the movie. That is just on the screenplay really really random. But then, but then what happens after that is the FBI just come and arrest this Reynolds and that's, that just ends like a real damn squib.

Yeah, that's that's that's that goes from badass to nothing. I do like an ending in which Gene Hackman's character survives as well. I do like that he got his Hawaii escape. This then takes us into the scene when they they kind of begin turning the tables on the NSA and the the setup that meeting doing the when Brill like meets John Freuds character and yeah, yeah, channelling fence and stuff. And it's been filmed and it's been recorded and it's all and then it's all lies recording a conversation just like in that one film called the conversation.

Have you noticed how there's two scenes in this film when someone says this conversation is over? Yes. Oh, right. So the yeah. So the other one is Rachel Banks Will Smith scene in the park, which is like a shot but not shot for shot not by long shot, but but it's. Dramatically very similar to. Visually quite similar to like that that conversation, the start of the. Conversation. Yeah, conversation, yeah, I think that itself is a brilliant fucking scene as well. Like when the coordinate and the the.

The costume display spies there with the microphones and stuff. And it shows they've got the dramatic massive overview right. They've got the macro view of things, they've got these cable satellites they can manoeuvre in a place at a second notice. But it increases the stakes and makes it a bit harder for the bad guys by having the whole, this is like a unidirectional mic kind of thing. You'll be pointing the right way, you got to be near them kind of thing. And when like you get down to kind of like the, the, the very kind of like micro rather than macro level of it.

It's the lads, this great bit of tension and great bit of thriller storytelling when they're doing this kind of very low, low paced pursuit, I guess you can call it. And they're trying to get a good read with the microphones. It's not perfect, it doesn't work perfectly. And of course, 1 aspect of the The Conversations plot is a imperfect audio recording, right? I mean, that's like a major thing about the conversation in general. What I also like about the scene, right and really well handled in the movie, but you don't see it coming that this whole thing is like a multi level ruse by Brill and and Dean to get Reynolds to incriminate himself more fully.

So they're doing it in the first place because they haven't got the recording. So they want to, they want to, they want to record him talking about the contents of the recording in order to create essentially new leverage that doesn't initially work in the initial 4 minutes for the building gets stormed and they're on the run. They get caught pretty much immediately. And then they wind up in the back of the free Nerd Squad van. And again, I think this is really clever. So they they're still trying to get Reynolds to incriminate themself because I think they still start recording stuff.

I think it's Brill who very subtly presses some stuff in the van and starts recording what's going on in the van. Yeah, I think so, yeah. And it's and it's good because it comes back later at the very end of the movie. So he starts up recording and then they still try and get Rose to to criminate himself, which he doesn't quite do. And then in order to kind of move things along a bit, Dean tells him, Oh, actually the tape, the tape is at this restaurant, Tom Sizemore's restaurant. And then he sets up, I think, and this is when Hackman's like, you're either incredibly smart.

We'll see in a minute. He sets up this this like a Mexican stand off where you've got two parties who are both very interested in our tape. They are not talking about which tape they're talking about. Exactly. It's brilliant. Very excited to kill each other in order to secure possession of this tape that neither of them have and neither of them, you know, wants size. Size one has a tape that that Reynolds doesn't want. Reynolds doesn't have a tape that Seismal wants. Just like what? It's fantastic.

It's brilliant. He's your friend. You persuade him to give us the tape. Hey, look, number one, he's not my friend and #2 he's not his tape. Whose is it? It's mine. OK, It's mine. I bought it. We sold it to him. Now you listen to me. Who are you? The fuck you trying to do it with me? Well, this looks bad. I'm with the federal government. The federal government made a prior tape. You guys ought to get in there. Wait A. Minute. Wait a minute. Listen, we can go get a warrant, come back with the FBI, take anything we want, arrest anybody that we want.

Just give the man the videotape the. Only one going to get arrested here is you felonious cock sucking with an attempt to swallow the evidence. So shut your mouth. It's it's old school trickery. I love it. That's brilliant. I don't know who's at it, I don't know who's at it. The only credited screenwriter is still Dominic Marconi. He was the guy who did the initial draft as well. He was cool for the one I read. But I'd like to think maybe this is like a Tony Gilroy inclusion. How's this kind of feel about?

Just doesn't it? It does. I like them just subtle things in. I like when characters are written as doing really smart things that are believable in their roles as like intelligence kind of guys like how Brill gets himself let out of the van long enough for the FBI who are monitoring the building to see, oh, that's a city cop and and he's bleeding. And that like really perks their attention up and stuff like that. And it's like, I like that. I like that. That's fucking really cool. I also like what he does in the back of the van, gets the other two goons like Jack Black and the other one to run into the building because just by, just by you got to go in there.

You got to go in there. It's happening, it's going, it's happening now. You got to get in there. You got to, it's like like just like goes them, goes them into leading because he's like the Technics. They're not like, you know, frontline field guys, but he's going to go them. Into doing it, Yeah. Like, they're not like operations dudes. And he makes them go loud, He makes them get the fuck in there. And it's and it's like this guy is a hell of a fucking operator, dude. This guy knows how to task people who work in the intelligence community to instantly do something, pretty much instantly do something that's that that's going to put their safety at massive risk, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it's Shaq Black. He can't fight. I mean, he'll just go like, yeah, yeah. And, and, and just be noisy and, and like, yeah, he's like, yeah, yeah. Nobody has the tape. The legend of the tape. A freaking story. Off the tape was way hardcore.

Fucking like grill kicks about the van. He's like, how can you throw me out of what is mine?

It's so good. So they're having that moment where they they've got the stand off going on and it's, I think it's Jake Ducey who runs in like from the back. Once they've all figured out oh shit, it's all. Going on and it's amazing. It's so good fucking Jake pussy comes in with this MP5 and and he's trying to get into what say the flank in position or like a full on enfilade position when he when he's just got absolute fucking force majeure at this point. But he just runs past this elderly Italian Lane Cook without even thinking.

This elderly Italian man might have a fucking short barrel old school side by side shotgun. And he does Andy God's Wi-Fi very, very quickly. Yeah, he is. Causing a massive good. Fight. In my mind, I was watching it. I was thinking like, is this the movie? There's a movie like this where there's a Mexican standoff kind of brewing where someone goes, oh, fuck, because they know it's about to go down. Like someone's about to start shooting. I can't remember what move that is. It's bothering me now like like because it's, it's like a trope.

But there's definitely like a movie where a whole bunch of people are in the standoff and one person knows they're about someone else is about to start shooting and they go, oh, fuck. But I can't think what movie it is. But it'll come back to me there. I I also excitedly jumped out on my seat because one of the mob guys had AVZ 61 Scorpion machine pistol and I always get excited when I see AVZ 61. It's one of the things that'll always quickly point at the screen go VZ 61 because I'm a big fan of technology.

I'm I'm a certified technologist because I also got pissy one like VZ 61's are showing us like firing a massive amount of like, you know, ammunition off before being reloaded because like the magazine is tiny and the cyclic fire rate's very high. So like it was my piss when someone's like rocking and rolling with the VZ 61 without reloading for ages. It's like the magazine is tiny. What a what a standoff. What a gunfight. What an absolute. It just wipes out a significant amount of of the the worst people in the film and it's excellent and it's just great performances again, by just an incredibly sweaty Tom Sizemore.

He's sweatier than than Papa John Schnatter in that video of Papa John did when they were trying to push him out of his own company a few years ago. He's like nobody, nobody knows pizzas like me. I've, I've, I've eaten 35 pizzas in the last 30 days and he's just like aggressively sweaty. I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days. He has no pizza experience. The day of reckoning will come and he looks like he's becoming pepperoni.

And Tom Sizemore has been fucking brilliant in this. The whole every appearance is in his class because he's because he's like Fat Tony from The Simpsons. Like what's a truck? It's it's sorry, guys. It's Tombstone. It's Tombstone, the gunfight Neil Corral, and it's Kurt Russell goes oh. My God. Jesus Christ. Yes, yes. Right. Wasn't sure I was gonna get there. Sorry. You're like tom-tom, Tom Sizemore right in this mizzy brilliant is like is like throwing down so much pasta. And like the thing they always tell you when they're shooting movies is like people, if you watch TV and movies, when people are eating, they'll get like the tiniest and morsel of food on their fork and they'll cut it and they'll cut it and they'll cut it.

And then eventually after like 10 lines, they'll put a tiny little bit in. But like this whole movie Sizemore was like like just belt feeding, belt feeding pasta. He's sweaty. He's like he's he has greasy, he's got those two little fat kids with him and he's like, sorry, harsh, harsh, those kids. But he's like, eat your food. Do you like your food? It's good food. Eat your food. Eat your food. Uncle Paul is going to take you to the zoo. Get out of here. You're coming to my restaurant. It's so fucking good.

And then what the fuck?

Tony Scott is a fucking hero in this house.

He's incredible. He's the GOAT in the film he's made. Co edited because it was probably because of his ongoing legal problems that we that we discussed last time. Probably sadly, but yeah, probably. It's like he's he's, he's just amazing. He has two scenes that he's sitting. No, he has three scenes because the third one is Pictrat in the video, right? In all of these scenes, he's sitting down. There is no walking done in this film by him. He's just sitting down. He may not even have anything on under that suit jacket and the shirt.

Yeah, his two, his two actual scenes are. Donald Duck yet? Yeah. So it's two actual scenes. He's sitting on the table. The table on that restaurant. Yeah, yeah. And like the other scenes when he said picture, I didn't like the video. That's evidence. When he showed at the store when he's sitting by the pool with someone, it was a very like kind of how how can someone do a Steven Seagalesque woof of shooting all you see and sitting down and still be so fucking cool? I guess it's because he's a cool guy.

After that, wrapping up the movie, I suppose you get one shot of the aftermath of like the first responders on the scene and stuff, and they're getting all these guns out of here, all that kind of stuff. Get get Will Smith out of here. He's not one of them. They figure out straight away, which is really nice. You know, I'm not sure that would happen in the current police climate these days with racism and so on. And then you get a shot of Jack Black all bloody, looking really sad and a Gurney going to hospital, which is just just like you piece of shit.

That's for that's for getting over some satellites. Twat deserve it. And then you get what I was talking about earlier on, which is the they and they cut to Langley. It's Jimmy Kennedy and Jack Black getting interviewed together. It might be FBI actually, but I I read online that it was Langley. Now I'm confused. I thought it was FBI, but they might have gone to Langley instead because apparently they grant the movie access to Langley, Virginia. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, Brill starts the recording of all that stuff in the van, but then Jack Black takes credit for saying that recording going and then he says like, oh.

And then they both stitched them and stick to the defence that they thought it was a simple treat, a standard training option. Can. I can I just ask the question of how naive do you have to be to to really believe that the multi $1,000,000 effort to track this one guy down over bottom of the last like week has been a standard training up? Yeah, I mean significant amount of blood and treasure being used on the standard training up those keyhole satellites could have been surveilling any number of valuable enemies of the state.

I mean, I'm like a kind of like state actor level, you know, like I mean they could be like surveilling like the Natanz nuclear facility. They could have been, even if like the the ones easily accessible above the US could have been say, I don't know, surveilling the cartels in in Latin America or whatever because they're a clear and present danger to these United States. Indeed, they are a clear and present danger to these United States. What about what about the the nuclear disarmament facilities?

The Derishnayer, I mean. Oh. Derishnayer Motherfucking hell you'd see. Can I see as well This film was only three years after the absolute best that was OP Centre. What? You know. 36 months. 36 fucking months after OP. Centre which was. Just like. Which shows you like how stylish and this movie holds up right? You know, I, I made a few comments about the, the title sequence at the beginning, which is a little bit like, yeah, it's, it's a bit like you wouldn't steal a car. Yeah.

But the rest of them would be actually, once you're into it's rhythm, it's it's really stylish and like and like holds. Up enemy of the state massively holds up, which is something that kind of had no Mulan, I guess because this is a period when like the whole idea right and lots of properties from this time is that America has no enemies space above and beyond, which also came out around this time. And this is a really deep cut. But obviously space above and beyond if you're significantly cooler than me and I've had a much more exciting life and on a massive screaming autist was a single season military sci-fi series made and I think 95 by Glenn Morgan and James Wong and some other people involved with The X-Files.

And obviously it follows a group of young recruits to the United States Marine Corps space aviators. It's fucking cool. And there's a scene when the guy like thinned out at the start by gonna be Sergeant played by Harley Ermi and and he's like asking one of the characters why they joined. And she's like, I wanted to find the the earth. He's like, why we have no enemies? And it's like, that was like a zeitgeist at the time, wasn't it? That was like a feeling like America was the feeling that America didn't really have enemies at the time.

The Cold War's over, you've got things like clear and present danger showing that the enemies are in fact like not non state actors. There's no real like kind of state actor enemy of the US. So which is why like the enemies are internal and they're all smaller level I think. Yeah, there was definitely the prevailing notion that they'd put Saddam Hussein back in his box, and then for the next 10 years we're just going to get ourselves involved in everybody else's conflict as the world's police. Absolutely.

Like it's a kind of kind of post Bosnia. This is when America has like becoming the world's police force. You've got both, both politically and in terms of like the friction that it creates, it's missing it's big major enemy, the Soviets. You've got like wonder. It's like, well, this, this surveillance state has got to justify itself somehow. So they're going to read the time on your for wristwatch, you know? And of course, what would then jolt America and the world, I suppose, back into kind of reality check would be would do 9/11 and then expressive swing go away with the global War on Terror and some pretty dodgy intelligence which has brought, you know, the Western Hemisphere into a war that maybe didn't have a legitimate legal basis for.

Yes #Chilcot Inquiry. The British, The British government, Yeah, that's Saddam. Saddam Hussein. So quantities of uranium. Uranium from. Africa, yes, sing along. Second first, same as the first. One of the bouncing ball. Everybody British. British government. Ah, there we go. British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Copyright Strike.

Oh wow, that's fun to go in the show notes. Should we? Should we? Should we take a break and do some categories? Absolutely. Let's take a quick break, quick musical interlude, and then we'll come back with some categories. First of all, we've talked a lot about casting throughout the movie, but we'll go for the casting because there's yet more to discuss. So ordinarily I like to roll through some of the good fat guys and that ladies who have been in the movie. In this case, we've talked about a funeral already.

So we've already talked about Thomas Sizemore and his uncredited role as the mobster Pintaro. I think his name is awesome. We've talked about Barry Pepper as if a Pratt who's the sniper in Pacific Pryor. I'm talking about Jake Busey. You mentioned Dan Butler earlier on. Who's the Rear Admiral Shaffer, who was also Bulldog in Frasier. A couple of ones that we haven't mentioned already. For one scene only, we get Philip Baker Hall as one of the partners at Robert Clayton Dean's law firm. That's the scene when Will Smith's getting thinned out then sacked, right?

That's right. He has that day outburst and then he's like, So what are you going to fire him? And he's like, and then Philip Baker Hall's like, I think you just fired yourself. So he's great. I'd, I'd seem to quickly get technical for a second and say that I I fucking really love the sound design on that, that scene, just that natural reverb and echo, like it, it adds, it adds so much to the scene and it's like, Oh my God, that's like, I'm watching the film my wife. Like holy fuck, that echo, man, that reverb.

It's beautiful. It's like Jesus Christ how the fuck am I married? That's when he raises his voice. You ever beat off in the shower, Brian? You ever have any homosexual thoughts? That is none of my fucking business. You're damn right it's not all. That stuff and it's like it's class room noise. Yeah, great. That's fucking brilliant. It's like, like it just, it just gives you the confidence that this was recorded in that goddamn room. Nori records, no other dubs. Absolute fucking cinema. Some more casting then from this good movie, so again you'd probably only see if there were two scenes.

Anna Gunn plays Reynolds wife Anna Gunn. You may know more Skylar White in Breaking Bad. That's right. Also, we have Grant Heslov, who's primarily producer but has got quite a lot of acting credits in his name as well. He's worked with George Triniolot and his last big acting role was as Doctor Nika in the 2020 Catch 22 mini series. But he's also Faisal in True Lies, and he's also Karfith in Seinfeld. He's the guy in the movie who's the editor at the newspaper? He he he had one of the best lines in True Lies when he's talking about some terrorist guy.

He like gloves saying Charlton hasn't about this like terrorist. He's like they they call him the sand spider. And Charlton hasn't said why he's like, probably because it sounds scary, Sir. And it's like, yeah, yeah, that guy's class. True Lies. What film? I'd like to take you now on a journey. Well, let me give you a choice. I have in my left hand the blue pill and in the right hand the red pill. And if you take the blue pill, Yeah, you'll go back to your ordinary life. This podcast never happened.

If you take the red pill, you get to join me and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes. I'm. Obviously going for the red pill. Of course you are guys, right? OK, so here's peer pressure, peer pressure, peer pressure. Can I get a glass of water with the pill? No. What happens if I take both pills? In the words of Robbie Williams in the song Rude Box 1 of the worst songs ever that was human in. The words of Robin Williams in the song Rude Box. Take both pillars. Fuck the matrix jackals, Jills something something else.

Like so many movies in the latter half of the 1990s, Tom Cruise was an issue in line to play Robert Clay and Dean, but had to pull out because production on Eyes Wide Shirts overrun. I don't know how well you know this, but Eyes Wide Shirts famously tortured production under Stanley Kubrick, known for his insane shooting style of doing like a zillion takes for the most simple of scenes. Like 82 shots of Tom Cruise shooting a door behind him and walking through a room, that kind of thing. Shoot went off for 15 months contractually obliged to remain with the production.

So he had to turn down about 15 jobs. Of course on that movie was his wife Nicole Kidman and this movie had a an obliterating effect on his marriage. So we're in this amazing place where he could have been reunited with Don Simpson and Joey Brukaina, just just a big walking cocaine fueled party. And Tony Scott Allah Top Gun in days of Thunder could have made that movie reseat himself in in this great stage of of action a little bit earlier, but in a stage where he was still taking on interesting new projects could have done that.

But instead, no, he's stuck in Pinewood Studios with his megalomaniac order doing like again, dozens of takes of him walking through room after closing a door. And then he's having these exhausting scenes where he's arguing with his actual wife with these really intense arguments. And then, as you can imagine, like Tom Cruise after this, something snaps in him and his next movie, Mission Impossible 2, the worst Mission Impossible movie. And then like for the next like fucking 1015 years, apart from some swings from 2001 to 2005 where just some really interesting stuff, but all of it was horribly wrong.

Not all of it. Some of it goes horribly wrong. The another Sky great movie wasn't that successful. Minority Report great movie was successful, but War of the Worlds pretty good movie, not successful. So on and so on and so on has a really, really bad time and then just does Mission Impossible movies for like ages and Jesus Christ. So that that that's that's one thing. That's the start of the rod at all. Next, one bit of a zag. We all know that Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in the Matrix so that he could play the role of John West Desperado Rough Rider.

You don't want this Nutter in wild Wild West. Little known fact, the backup for Gene Hackman character Brill in this movie, it was going to be Sean Connery. And Sean Connery turned down the role of Morpheus in The Matrix. So we could have had Tom Cruise opposite Sean Connery in this movie. Thrill with the Scottish. Accent, obviously. He wouldn't have obviously pretended. In the slightest. To be American, it's like I was on the borders of Iraq and Iran shelling weapons with my partner. You know it's not just.

Like. I blew up a building 'cause you made a phone call. You're kind. Of an asshole, aren't you you can see Connery doing this pretty well like like did he tell you his name was Brillo did you say it and then he ran with it you kind of you can kind of hear him doing that because he's a lot of because he does a lot of scolding in this movie and Sean Connery's pretty good at scolding people in movies you. People scold like Sean Connery. You people can fully scold you. It's one of the best things about this, the scene and said Meteor.

When he just abuses people, he just berates people. He's good at that. So we're not finished digging deeper with my rabbit hole trouble. Also at this time, Will Smith turn down a role in Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes. So I had a look at that one and said, if not Nicolas Cage, who wasn't Snake Eyes, who could it have been? And I found Kevin Costner and Tom Cruise again and also Mel Gibson for the role of of Nick Santoro in that movie. But then we could have had Tom Cruise working with De Palmer again right after doing mission and then maybe his marriage isn't ruined.

So yeah, more, you know, with a circle and a circle with a wheel within a wheel. Next. Digging deeper. OK. Also also considered for the role of Robert Clayton Dean Sylvester Stallone not not touching that right next. One, why is he considered for all these roles? He's eminently fucking unsuited as he was considered for Jack Ryan. He was considered for fucking Jack Ryan in in in hood for October. He would be bad at it. He's he's he's he's not a bad actor by any means, but he's not believable As for a start, a labour lawyer because he's just far to Gabba Google.

He's far to forget about it. Like he's like, he's not believable as a guy who was involved in legal tussles between workers and their corrupt unions. For a start, if he's in this film, he's sitting fucking next to Tom Seizwell, also aggressively eating pasta, just like he like, like he has a fork. Any chance he's, like, got about it, you know? Yeah, got about it. Hey. Don't you know who you're talking to? Do you want me to shut the smoke up? Something like that? You. Know. Yeah, basically he's, he's, he's, he's not working as a lawyer of any kind.

Not believable on this phone. Agreed. Also considered for Robert Clayton Dean. Here we go. Keanu Reeves. So now we have a situation where we could have had Tom Cruise in Snake eyes, Nick Cage temporarily out of the job for those three weeks out of that year. Keanu Reeves as Robert Clayton Dean reprising a similar kind of role to well, not really, but you know, he did. He did, what did he do around this time? Devil's advocate, where he's a lawyer, but he was Southern for some reason. But he might, he might have done a weird swing there, who knows?

But you know, a lawyer on the run, OK, could have had instead of Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus, could have Sean Connery as Morpheus and had Will Smith as Neo. Like, like, like the possibilities are endless. It should take HP, right? OK. And here's the one that's really going to bring it all together. OK, right. I did some digging and back in The Fugitive in 1993, considered for the role of Samuel Gerard was Gene Hackman. So Gene Hackman could have returned to that rule in US Marshals in 1998, making him unavailable and in the state, therefore forcing Sean Connery.

Holy shit, dudes. So what I'm trying to say to you is that if you believe in the many worlds theory, I think in this rare occasion we've landed on a pretty good one. Yeah, things things could have been so much worse. The only the only real casualty here is Tom Cruise and Nicole Kippers marriage, but I think they've made it work. So. I think at this point you've officially knocked Harry Turtle off the top spot when it comes to historical fiction authors. Holy shit Mike, that was some great work. I am Wilding out at these dark and concerning possibilities.

Call me Pandora, you'll look at my box.

Shall we, Shall we move on to our favourite courts? Oh yes. Oh God, yes. Immediately at the beginning, just are you blackmailing me? You ambitious ships really good. So fucking good, my favourite one. The only person under arrest here is you for felonious. Cox. Quadro do it for Italy. The only person under the only fucking hell, the only person under arrest here is you. For the only person under arrest here is you for felonious cock sucking and attempting to swallow the evidence. That's disgusting.

That's Tom Sizemore, Angel in heaven, you fucking king. One from Brill. You know when they hijack that guy's car after the train yard chase, he just shoots shotgun into the hijacks of car. The guy understandably is is protesting it. He just throws out into the car to the street and just yells tell your story walking. And then she finds the car door. Tell your story walking. I love that man so. Good. I know another one for Dan Butler. It's a little bit longer, but Dan Butler, who plays Rue Admiral Schaeffer, when they're having the meeting in the NSA to try and get to the bottom of what the fuck is going on, he hits the table.

Listen people, everyone knows where this is going. If this was a legit OP, and I can't imagine how it could be, then so be it. But if this was someone's unilateral wet dream, then that someone is going to prison. Unilateral wet dream. Wet Dream. Great band name, my God. Yeah, so many absolute all timer quotes in in this film, like you said, I can't find the I can't find slash remember the actual wording of it. But one of the NSA guys says, what's it going to take buildings to come down before people take this seriously?

And it's like, hello 911. And of course, the bad guy's date of birth. Is 9. 11 You caught that right. Crazy. There's another 9/11 adjacent thing in the original screenplay where they talk about, I think it's in the initial argument. Here we go. So Reynolds is having that argument with Hammersley on the park bench and he says there are planes falling out of the sky, buildings blowing up American buildings, Americans getting bombs on their nail. What are we going to do? When you look at things that predicted 911, man, it's like, you know, the lone gunman, the expiles.

Episode 1 of The Lone Gunmen involves the remote control hijacking of an airliner to fly it into the World Trade Centre. This screened in March of 2001 and all those things that kind of, you could say hinted at it a little bit. Referencing St. Thomas of Clancy's Codex Debt of Honour, in which a Japanese airline pilot flies an airline air into the Capitol building as the kamikaze attack track on surrounds album Extinction Level Event. I'm going to paraphrase it. I want to get fired from life, but I'm the kind of gentleman who will fly playing into your building in the name of Allah.

And and it's like it's like this is like a theory podcast, but it's kind of like for identification, you know, like it's said. Why like the shit hot. I'm not in the media. It's like I gotta be very careful on reporting on victims of crime and stuff. Because if one paper says that this this victim of crimes I who lived on a street in East Hartford, but we're not going to give them his name. I don't know that paper says, you know, this victim who won't say where he lives, but he worked at American athletes or whatever, Then it's like you can determine it like that.

So I don't think these these properties, he's literally predicted 911, but I do think that the kind of tapped in there may be a feeling in in like society that's something big. You know, should we hit some needle drops? There aren't there aren't that many. So there's I mentioned it earlier on the 6th Underground by sticker pimps from from the golden age of trip hop and trip hop adjacent music. The other trip hop adjacent act in this movie is more cheaper and then the rest of the soundtrack because of the movie movie is a bit of a stealth Christmas movie in that they're doing Christmas shopping right at the start of it.

There is a there's a fair amount of Christmas music in the movie as well, like rocking around the Christmas tree, that kind of stuff, which I don't really want to get into until it is Christmas for us. Also, what I should say though is that the main score was it was going to be, I want to say it was going to be a Zimmer, but it became a Harry Grayson Williams who people may know more for Metal Gear Solid IMDb trivia. Again, I think we've hit some of this already. As I mentioned earlier on, the NSA did not support filming of the movie.

After some discussions backwards and forwards other interesting stuff, in October 2016 ABC announced that it had green lit ATV series sequel with Brookheimer on as executive producer and the series would take place two day 2 decades after the original film where an elusive NSA spy is charged with leaking classified evidence and an idealistic female attorney was partnered with a hawkish FBI agent to stop a global conspiracy but but nothing came to fruition also. That's actually fucking cool, I would watch that.

Yeah, it's network TV, so it would have been like sort of blacklist kind of level, kind of. Yeah, wouldn't it? Yeah, But yeah, could have, could have been, could have been good. Right. Next category, then. This is a really hard question, Sonia, and I don't know how you're going to answer it, but how would this have gone down in Germany?

I've been dreading this question all evening.

So we do have varying different intelligence services that don't like each other and that do things they are not supposed to do every now and then. I think something made the news earlier this year or later last year with our federal intelligence services overstepping their boundaries a bit. But the whole murder, violence, shoot out, it probably is not something that would happen here. I think that that's something that that works really only in the US, given that the US is very much more prone to general firearms used in first place.

They've got more lakes in that they can dump unwanted senators into, and they've got more policemen, federal agents and whatnot with an itchy trigger finger. If you check the wiki page for lethal firearms use in Germany by police, etcetera, you'll find it's very fucking short. So I really don't see something like especially that shoot out at the end happening here ever. I think that would like, I think that would like get everyone banned from having firearms indefinitely across several branches of government.

So if you're if you're Robert Clayton Dean and you're on the back of that van, essentially what you're trying to do is orchestrate a giant bar brawl, basically.

It's like like he's trying to fight the Bavarian branch of the Christian Conservative party who's trying to increase the amount of surveillances can do on non blonde people in Munich or something. Like absolutely. What do you mean I'm not allowed to access all your social media after insulted Schnitzel? This man said. What about Schlager music? Online, he touching my leader horn. Shy Sir, I don't know. I am trying. I can see the barrier in, in fairness has very far reaching police laws and that is an ongoing issue because they keep expanding it.

And we currently have discussions on whether police are allowed to use AI and on constant video tracking, monitoring and facial recognition and train stations, etcetera. So that actually is a discussion that is ongoing. I think the US has just simply skipped that point. So Germany is possibly in in in in terms of surveillance. Germany is probably currently reaching the point that firm was at several decades ago. I just don't see the police, I don't know the Bavarian head of state dumping a local Green Party member into into the bodency to get rid of his opinion.

I do really like the German title of the movie being, forgive my pronunciation, Dershtatz Faint Norma Aintz. I really like that. That's fine. Norma Aims. See, we, we, we do enemies of the States, just we neatly sort it.

You are merely of the council of enemies of the State, but we do not grant you the rank of Master. We do not grant you the rank of existential threat, Sadia. I'm going to do something that upsets you on second bit. Also also I think the the the misalignment between the different government branches could be just because no one understands the Bavarian no take it away, take it away, right? For, for, for for the listeners. The The resident Northumbrian is taunting me from his living room. The Bavarian flag.

Indeed, I have a tiny little Bavarian flag I took from a pub in Newcastle that was having an Oktoberfest celebration a couple of years ago. Paving it. We've getting the patriotic.

Man, you know what Bavaria is also going to be good for? Like sort of German civil war. They always act like they want their own secession. Jesus. So there's like, so you're telling me there's a Pavexit movement? Yeah. Well, and once again, once again, it's the South, way down South and land of traders, rebels, snakes and alligators.

Oh my God, you and young boys will win the battles. Run away. Run away. No, no, I really desperately want to move on. Yes, it's. We can see that in your face. Kind of. Roy, have you got some notes from the peanut gallery? I do, I do for a sort of, it's difficult to kind of navigate through the reviews of this film on Letterbox because a lot of them are just admittedly very correct. They live in a digital panopticon. We followed all the time. This this film is very prophetic. And while it's on point, it's also not super funny.

So I found some good ones. A true love letter to going on the computer. What a cast. An absolute stable of boys it is. The feds are gang stalking me and trying to ruin my life. All these useless fucking updates for my phone are from the NSA. 3 explanations. They want to spy on me more efficiently. They want to go through my gallery and see my Dick pics and shit and watch me jerk off in 1080P. Well fuck that. I'm not installing these updates you mother fuckers. All capitals. Fuck you for exclamation marks.

3 1/2 stars watched by Mark on the 5th of August 2022 with Jack Black, Seth Green and Jamie Kennedy playing the worst douchebags you've ever met. This is every 90s film Bros. Worst nightmare is that really is Jon Voight essentially playing himself. Will Smith running and screaming through train yards, hotels and streets. Jack Black, Green and blue hues. We should be very lucky a movie like this exists. This film is not fictional simply based on the implications. As time goes on, Enemy Estate has only proven to be more and more relevant.

An exciting thriller with Scott's usual impressive All Star cast, humour, action, heart. All right, pay Tom Sizemore Tony Scott thanks that very true romance ask ending to the NSA agent. Reading this now even you got to understand that this film makes a pretty strong point. Asshole. Amazing. Tony Scott, you have to stop. You smoke too tough, you swag too different. Your bitch is too bad the NSA will kill you. Still kind of adorable that this film posits the two things the totalitarian might of the deep state cannot overcome.

A a running and BA Gabba Google coated top sizemore. Absolutely brilliant homicides. More sweats out big bullets of cocaine in this. And there's one great review here. Just technology bad. 3 1/2 stars watched by Faith on the 14th of May 2025. Fuel for the R slash gang stalking crowd. The gang stalking subreddit is amazing by the way. What is the gang stalking subreddit? Right. I'm afraid to ask, but I need to know. Yes, I am as well. You know what here, right? So listen, listen, motherfucker, outsco.

I'm going to open it up now and just have basically. So gang stalking is this very, very online belief that people are targeted individuals. That's a, that's a phrase name that they use targeted individual or TI who are being stalked by multiple people in these kind of like organised operations just to stalk them to make the life hell, that kind of thing. A lot of it's just untreated mental, mental health and stuff. He he has a post here. Every time I leave my house, there are feds watching me. They are in hats and sunglasses like this and they're stalking me.

They pretend they're shopping in the store. But every time I look round I can see them near me and it's there's like a picture of just a truck, a hat and some sunglasses. That's like and the Fragonies illusion where people believe a whole bunch of different people are all one person. The comments here are great. This sub is so good. Rusty shackle fat looking some bitch. It's summer, everyone looks like this. Not at all what the feds wear to be undercover. I would definitely start wearing identical hat and sunglasses.

These people believe that they're being targeted and followed for whatever reason. There's a post here when a guy's like just literally taking a photo of a guy parked. Looks like this guy's parked at a welcome. That was sort of Rory Reed's descriptions of images. He looks out on the screen. This, this guy, there's a guy who looks like a total hoss in a in the driver's seat of a vehicle. It appears to be parked up at some kind of drive through because there's a menu behind him. He's wearing a trucker hat, a beard, I'm not looking in a mirror, he's flipping the bird to the photographer.

And the subject of the post is cops are definitely in on it. I never really believed the police was in on my harassment. I did see them follow me but I just thought it was a quiescence. I think it means coincidence. But today I woke up in 24 hour fitness parking lot and I could hear a couple of guys laughing as they throw rocks at my truck. When I got up I see two cops to my left laughing. It's wild that I see why some people have a hard time believing it, but it's true. Don't call them, it's a waste of time.

Also I would have took pics from knocking lie. I didn't want any interactions with them or them to ask why I'm taking pics. Deeply sad. Shall we do the ML Kuwa MD kuwa MH Kuwa of the movie? For people who haven't listened to us before, this is the military tomoji we use when we're developing analysis of the OP4 opposing forces courses of action available to them. So you have your most likely course of action, your most dangerous course of action. And in our case, we also have the most hilarious course of action.

But I tend to use it as what would happen after the movie's events have taken place. So the, for me, the ML Coer I've I've come up with is Robert Clayton. Dean returns to his law firm. He makes partner within 12 months as the firm are concerned about pissing off their best employment law litigator right after wrongfully dismissing him. He and Carla are fine because she seemingly has mild brain damage throughout the movie. We didn't really talk about that. But she her character is like all over the place.

She starts off really strong anti flash and then she's like, I missed you so I put on the lingerie. What she was like really angry at him. Anyway, Brill remains hidden out somewhere sunny. Lamentably, it's probably going to be in the Far East. Jack Black goes to goes to prison and is required to pay back the US Treasury the cost of all the times he requisitioned to satellite before giving command approval to do so. Most dangerous course of action With Reynolds dead, there was a gap to be filled with the NSA and incredibly, Jack Black becomes the new deputy Director of the National Security Agency.

Despite his flagrant misuse of government property, he is worse than Reynolds and eventually seeks a top job. And late in his career, he orchestrates the false flag assassination attempt on President Trump during his 2024 re election campaign. Coming in hot, Tanya. Allegedly, and I haven't written the most in Irish course of action, but I'm hoping you have. So the signs for ongoing hilarity are shown in the closing beats of the film. When Dean's son is shown to be a Warhammer nerd, they go all Warhammer nerd.

He's reading White Dwarf magazine, he's looking at pictures of high health miniatures and stuff. Robert Clayton Dean realises that with his son's increasing desire for more and more very expensive Warhammer miniatures and Games Workshop products in general, being a high flying lawyer simply won't cut it. Things are getting far too expensive. The price creep, I was there at the time, the price creep of these things wasn't as crazy, right? So he realises there's one way he can make more money than being a lawyer.

He goes back to stripping for elderly Japanese families. He starts making a huge amount of money, but it gets but it gets but it gets harder. It gets more difficult. Workshop bring out more and more new additions of the games. It's got to bag in on a new addition. 40K a new addition. Warhammer fantasy battle one offs like Blood Bowl come out. He's like shit, what about do? Stripping for two or three elderly Japanese women and the husbands at a time won't cut it. He moves to Hokkaido, he gets involved in a grimy illegal Hokkaido donkey show ring, and he ends his days hilariously but sadly, debasing himself utterly in front of the most perverted octogenarian Japanese ladies who say terrible things don't win, but his son just kicks ass at all the Warhammer tournaments and there we go.

Oh my God, at the end there was was Keith Davis stood beside like ass to ass. Grief and like while, while while all this has happened. Will Smith's like my son's gotta get the new High Elf box. Oh my God what the fuck is Age of Sigma?

I just egregious oversell of the military industrial complex. I think we've covered it all already really. The CCTV footage, AI generated Blade Runner machine for me personally. But also we can mention this, the agility, the volume of the taste of the intercept an employee and the speed which is turned into actionable intelligence as mental. So my big example for that is when they get the CCTV footage from the convenience store after Will Smith makes his phone call on the payphone and they can analyse their facial footage and match the face of Brill.

And they bring up the photograph from the conversation incidentally to to him as a former NSA employee. And then all that. You could say, you could argue, oh, well, you don't know how much time was there, but somebody says this is footage from the parking lot 20 minutes ago showing which direction the El Camino drives in. And it's like, so they've done all of that and figure out where they're heading within 20 minutes of the event happening. For me, the the oversell of the Miller Industrial Complex starts at about minute #1 and ends at about a minute 123 or so.

The fact that they can manoeuvre the keyhole satellites because they don't get it right like like the terminology right. They use like the keyhole satellites for imaging and the fact that they can manoeuvre them that quickly and and like nimbly. It's like at least I forget if the film of Patriot Games goes into this, but the book of Patriot Games goes into the amount of time it takes to manoeuvre about one of those KH satellites take it to get footage. The fact that they can pick up, you know, CCTV from a laundry shop that can they can instantly put a tap on your pay phones.

The only real kind of explanation to this is that everything is being recorded all the time, I guess, which ironically, we're closer to, I guess, now than we were then. Circling back to what you said about, does the film kind of oversell the intelligence community's ability to surveil the American people into such a way that it makes the film not a cautionary tale? It does. It does really, because it's like the grasp is too vast, the scope's too huge, smoke too hard, the bitch too bad. Will Smith will kill you.

And I say, but but now, now certain parts of it are more believable. Like, I mean, if I went up to someone by five years ago and said, do you believe that everyone's telephone lines are recorded? Most people would probably say no. Now you'd be able to. I mean, if I walked into a pub and I said fucking 10 people and said do you believe the government is constantly recording about phone calls? To the extent that if you use a pay phone, if you can find one that's not a defibrillator station or a public toilet, then you know they can pick it up like that.

Most of them will probably say yes.

Right. Would this movie, this movie have been better if it had Jack Ryan, Doctor Richard Kimble or President James Marshall get off my plane in in it? I would say that if you add Jack Ryan to this, you are sort of changing the changing the game a little bit. Obviously, I know the CIA can't operate on American soil without partnering with another law enforcement agency. We've all seen Sicari alright. So I mean, there's a non zero chance that Jack Ryan, any of the Jack Ryan's, especially the Harrison Ford Jack Ryan, maybe the John Krasinski Jack Ryan as well would have partnered up with the FBI and he would have been in that building surveilling the Gabagool restaurant.

Doctor Richard Kimble. There would it would have been a pretty funny kind of payoff if they accidentally started hunting Richard Kimble instead of Robert Clayton Dean. Like I didn't do it. And Jack Black's like, I don't care.

Like a freaking I don't care. Scott Khan and his massive neck just having a fist fight with with President Marshall on Air Force One and and President Marshall's trying to choke Scott Khan out from behind. He can't do it. Fucking huge. He's like, get off my plane and then the the the parachute goes and Scott Carn just lands safely. Would this movie have benefited from a weird little scruffy guy played by Peter Thorpe? I think every film benefits from. Colombo. Weird little scruffy guy. Yeah, I mean I'm a weird little scruffy guy and I would make most films better I think, or worse, but I'm Colombo especially.

Yeah, once again, as I said in the last one, the question is where would apply him because he wouldn't fit with the NSA guys at all because they're all these like hopped up lads, apart from Chief Filling, they're all these young hopped up dudes who he's he's too laconic to to fit in with them. He could have given a much more laconic take on Brill and I think it would have been quite surprising, especially with the kind of bait and switch when he's got Gabriel, the literal Devil burn, being thought to be Brill.

But then it turns out he isn't Brill and he's just like being chased by, you know, Colombo in a dirty raincoat driving an El Camino. He doesn't have like the intimidate and physicality of Gene Hackman, who you believe even at that age could like find a spot in any building with no CCTV and punch you in the gut until you threw up on yourself, you know, But I think you'd be classed as Brill. I think you'd make a good a good old old retired spook who knows his way around things, you know? Would this movie have benefited from Lieutenant Commander?

Tell me the old Jackson U.S. Navy replacing the Admiral with him? That just getting really upset, dude. That's exactly what I was thinking as well. So yeah, if you mother fuckers run an illicit operation, is that somebody's unilateral wet dream? You know where they go? What a prison for it? Like, yeah.

Slamming his first on the fucking desk because he says that like multiple times. Like motherfucker, I've had it with these motherfucking spanky haired nerds on my motherfucking unilateral OP, you know? Or or replace Regina King with some Al Jackson and have him play the wife. I'm not getting out of this house. I bought those drapes. Incredible. Right. Is this movie pro or anti CIA? This is a nuanced question. I think you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier on. Yeah. I mean the the get out I suppose is that in the plot is that it's a rogue up by this bitter, ambitious little guy.

He's been passed over. His wife says he should have been deputy director like 2 or maybe 3 years ago, but he'll get after this. So that's his motivation. He's passed over, he's a bad guy, he's doing something naughty but it's not. Which is kind of like how they get around the CIA being a bit dodgy and corrupt in clear and prison danger. But it's not good enough I don't think. On the other hand, the CIA comes out pretty well, I think, in that there the agency that clean house, even though they're the CIA, which is a bit weird.

FBI certainly do. I picked up from the film. I don't know if I'm wrong here, but I mean the NSA doesn't operate out with American territory, right? So Brill, who was Field Agent Brill's CIA, not NSA? Right, there you go. Yeah, so this film Abe, I didn't have being anti NSA is I guess pro CIA because you do kind of see them at odds in, in both fiction and in reality, right. The CIA is like showing us like more noble, I think than the NSA. I mean, there's no real way to nobly portray an NSA officer on on the silver screen, right?

I mean, and there's a significant amount of like bold portrayals of CIA officers, everything from Jack Ryan to Jack Ryan, Jack Ryan, Jack Ryan, get Jack Ryan, pass off, get Jack Ryan. We hit all the five Jack Ryan's there. You feel you're. Going Jack Ryan, junior. And Jack Jack Jack Jack, Ryan Junior, Felix later, Felix later and Felix later. Ben Affleck in Argo. You can't really make a pro NSA film I don't think. Will Smith surviving the movie and ultimately trying thing does make this a pro MIB movie on the back of what you saw about Felix later.

Do we need to make a Jeffrey like a Jeffrey Wright category as well? Like would this movie be improved by the presence of Jeffrey Wright? I know. Yeah, absolutely. He's add him to one of these. Definitely the black guy. Very, very good to. What? What do you? What do you improve this, Phil? Yeah, yeah, Jeffrey Wright, definitely. I think he also could have made a good Brill. Maybe like one of the feds or something give like give like the FBI guys a bit more screen time and have him as, have him as one of the guys surveilling Man, I love, I love films and people get surveilled.

I love, I love, I love. I love films with surveillance vans and people get surveilled and stuff. If I could have podcast for you,

Ding Chavez Award for missed opportunity in the movie. I've got two. I've got 2, right? I'm going to let you do yours maybe first. Biggest missed opportunity is there could have been more cat antics. Not everything has to be funny, but there was scope for a little bit of comedy, cat acting and maybe maybe the cat was a little bit more wilful and was a bit more arsy with Will Smith and stuff. I mean the whole not letting him into the vehicle until he shows him the cat was pretty good, but the could have thrown in a cat related comedy scene.

I agree. Sanier, do you have anything to add? I would have liked to have seen FBI activity maybe And I think circling back to to inserting a weird scruffy guy. I think I would like the weird scruffy guy to have the lead on the FBI team. Is it Imagine him just coming on, coming into the the restaurant after the doubt? Just yeah. Him being the guy, just get him out of there. Yes, I've just, I've just got one more question, like, am I? Do you still have the tape? You could also have him show up at the weird lingerie store for his wife.

And he knows exactly, exactly what a bra size is. And he's like, I don't need to look at these ladies. I know exactly what she wants. And the like, the manager is like, Oh yes, Columbo, you're our best customer. Hey, Doggy.

Hey doggy, Because he is the best customer. Like his wife's an absolute fucking Dane piece. Like 11 out of 10, right? I think we have two, two big missed opportunities in the movie on top of those as well. Great, great additions. I think one, we haven't had a scene where Gene Hackman mournfully plays this saxophone when he's in the jar to just just really hammer home that that that conversation. Yes. And then finally, this is one of the few movies of this era where Will Smith doesn't recap the events of the movie during the end credits with a rap song composed specifically for the movie.

This is a yeah Big Willy style kid though. Speaking Speaking of The Fresh Prince, did he all see when his wife said she was going to go back to Philly? Right, the final category command and signals call signs of the movie. Be honest with you. I've even I've been prepped in it yet. This is going to be completely off my Dome, Robert. Jason Dean, What would his call sign be? I can call him chippy because I think of the Clayton St chip shop in Newcastle, but that is really not going to play with the one known in Newcastle.

And this is eggplant. Since he refers to himself as the slur eggplant, it's a good one. Big Willy Brill. Brill. Brill's course. I'm Brill. Brill is already the guy who's called saying, but he needs a better one. So Pac-Man. Cat man, I like that. Cat man, cat man, cat dad. This is a rare this is a rare Gene Hackman non horny performance. But I was suppose we could call Reynolds Horn dog because he has a wife who's about 30 years younger than him and a small child. Yes, yes, Reynolds call sign is definitely horn dog.

Horny for promotion as well. Jake's Jake Busey's call sign is just Bussy, obviously the Admiral played by the guy who played Bulldog and Frazier. His course is obviously just Bulldog. Bulldog is definitely easy, easy, easy piece. What would what, what course? And we're given Jack Black. Yeah, he likes the hair he likes, doesn't he? So just call him Hair. Yeah, because he's got that School of Rock haircut for a start. Like, that's the haircut that you fucking reprise for School of Rock, right? And he?

Had a high fidelity as well. Did and and Vialik is is is is isn't the hairy legs. That's not for so we are because that means that he's like surveilling her in in the material and she's just the fucking housekeeper. And like, one of the plot points of the movie is that the housekeeper's car wouldn't have been bugged or tracked. Yeah, because they don't care about the housekeeping. So he's just doing that on his own time. I haven't got a call sign for Seth Green's character, but just an observation.

Seth Green's character in this Just guy monitoring what's going on from a van. It's pretty much what Gene Hackman's character was doing in the conversation. So if this movie was a proper sequel suit, we'd probably just follow this guy's little pathetic life. Yeah, so you could the both got the yellow. Glasses as well. Yeah, so you're going to see him like, doing this little shit in the van and then you what, like, what is his home life like, do you reckon? Terrible. He's like, he lives on ramen noodles, jacks off constantly, has no friends.

Arkan owns a Dreamcast. He owns a Dreamcast. He spends a lot of time on Usenet. He he, he is, he is. He is on loads of obscure bulletin boards. In a few years time he'll be a very early adopter of 4 Chan. He'll post on our slash gang stalking, just telling people that they definitely are being surveilled and, and and and the need to just do out of pocket things like you need to start carrying a gun all the time all the time. And his NSA buddies are like. Well, to summarise, we've just been discussing the 1998 movie Enemy at the Gates.

Fuck Enemy of the State by Sorry, Scott, starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman and all those cool people. But if you enjoyed that, yeah, please feel free to drop a like or subscribe or any kind of engagement. That would be massively appreciated. What movie have we got next? Rory? O'Toole I. Believe we have our first listener question. Shout out to our follower Jim and Crumpton who has suggested we do the Clint Eastwood Cold War thriller Firefox. Nice. That's the movie Firefox from 1982. Falkland.

Yeah, the. Falkland. Yeah, the year of my birth as well. Holy shit. OK, cool. So I suppose all I have to say is that I've been Mike. I've been Sonia. I've been Rory. And together, we've been clearly impressed.

One day, one day we're going to get that spot on, and it's going to be beautiful as going to be that. We're going to be on the NSA's radar at that point, a la bomb. President, Queen, Hi. Hi NSA, it's too late to hide your face now. Hey, dude. So yeah, man, yeah, fucking people on Reddit are in fucking bits of you guys getting reflect on, you know, there's a lot of angry American gay nerds who are like, Oh my. God. Americans love Flaktorne. It's crazy. It's fucking weird, isn't it? Like it's, I've I've seen people saying that it's like very well suited to like, like don't reflect on here.

I've seen people saying that was good because I was I was like saying how like Americans go and like there's like Americans on suicide watch on on Reddit over the Germans getting rid of Flaktorne. I've seen a lot like discourse like scenic Flekton is incredibly versatile for like most American terrains and stuff. And it's like Flekton is marked out as one of those camo patterns that marks you as a friend when the boog happens. Multicam is not. I'm just looking at the 18 minutes ago, 18 minutes ago American Pipe dreams Instagram account posted.

What are your thoughts on multi time worse than multi Cam? I'm going to fucking like edit this back in like a little. Do a little noise and be like just from later on the card like.

Enemy of the State (1998)

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