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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