Thank goodness that Tony Scott directed the latest Jerry Bruckheimer schlockbuster Enemy of the State, for David Marconi's screenplay could have easily been Michael Bay'd into an irredeemable caffeine frenzy. What kind of world do we live in when Tony Scott's claustrophobic images and manic editing no longer seem quite so...urgent?

Will Smith stars as rich (and, we learn as the story progresses, snooty) lawyer Robert Dean. He leads the star attorney's existence specific to motion pictures in that he moonlights as a devoted husband and father and is unafraid of both the mafia and the FBI, but has a closet full of skeletons perfect for every plot twist. In other words: ripe for the governmental pickin's. A conservationist (Chasing Amy's Jason Lee) by chance videotapes the NSA murder of a rebellious congressman (Jason Robards, who probably really does play these parts in his sleep), and before he's chased to death by yes-men, he slips the incriminating footage into Dean's Christmas shopping bag, unbeknownst to our Fresh Prince. Brick by brick an underground operation (led by Jon Voight as "Reynolds") dismantles Dean's life in search of the evidence; luckily, he meets Gene Hackman's Brill (last name "Cream"?), a computer cracker who knows the ins and outs of surveillance technology.

To coin a critic's cliché, Enemy of the State sizzles for the duration of Hackman's performance, but the actor mined this landscape before in the better, simpler paranoia picture The Conversation. (Scott pays numerous homages to Hackman's character in that film, professional eavesdropper Harry Caul.) Hackman generally shows up the rest of the players, so it's either a blessing or a curse that Brill doesn't arrive early in the film. While I appreciated Scott's defiantly slow set-up, Hackman's presence boosts the tempo to our appeasement.

What about Big Willie Styles? Post-Men in Black, he's the studio's major selling point. Smith is just fine, but ironically given his TV background, he has difficulty selling Enemy of the State's lesser, sitcom-level dialogue (not to mention the more cannibalistic passages--Scott borrows freely from the interrogation scene in his own True Romance, with Dean frequently referred to as an "eggplant"). (Aside: has Scott made some devilish pact to conclude all of his post-True Romance films with a Mexican standoff? His latest is particularly contrived but gobs of fun.) Voight isn't quite as menacing as he could/should have been, his character vying for villainous attention with various wowza-popping tracking devices and a roster of hip young actors (among them, Scream's Jamie Kennedy and Saving Private Ryan's Barry Pepper) as snot-nosed, trigger happy rookie snoops. "The Cosby Show" vet Lisa Bonet, in a thankless role, certainly doesn't embarrass herself, but her hairdo is distractingly similar to that of dreadlocked ex-husband Lenny Kravitz.

Charged yet quaint, Enemy of the State tries very hard to make us leave the theatre as government-fearing as its jittery protagonist becomes, but it succeeds in only entertaining us, which is obviously its foremost purpose. The film tells us that bad guys are Republicans, Hackman is a man you can trust, and when you walk into pretty much any store these days (even your local futuristic lingerie shop), security cameras will monitor your entire shopping experience. I knew all that going in, having left my house on occasion. If you're a Luddite shut-in, Enemy of the State is bound to scare the pants off you. At which point the time will have come to get jiggy with it.-Bill Chambers