Upstream - S2E3: Enemy of the State

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

What happens when the entire force of the 1998 NSA is brought to bear, Including a limitless budget, Magic security cameras, spy satellites, and absolute power to kill without oversight, to obliterate the life of a single random dude?  But what if that dude was Will Smith? Find bonus episodes at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond   *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond  

A modified cell phone interfaced with a laptop computer creates an enormously powerful tool. Hello and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond Season 2. We're back. I am Alice Caldwell-Calley. I'm joined once again by Abigail Thorne. Hello. My name's Abigail. As always.

We've got double Abigail's here. Oh, fuck. I'm just kidding. She's here for real this time. Yeah, I'm back from LA. I have blonde hair. I's here for real this time. Yeah, I'm back from LA. I have blonde hair. I've got enormous lip fillers. I've got a tiny dog and a huge iced coffee,

and I'm ready to record a podcast. My God, bestie. And we have Devin also. Yeah. I'm getting big into surfing. I think that'll be good. Yeah, cool. Now entirely, it's an all-Californian podcast.

Let's go. And in celebration of this, we watched a 1998 spy movie called Enemy of the State with Will Smith. In a Gold's Gym Venice, which is, as we know, dude mecca. Is that the one that's just like open, just like on the beach? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck, that's cool. I went there. We saw it.

It was good. I'm not quite sure what a california alice vibe would be i mean i don't know if you have ideas write in let me know right on the top bikini on the bottom yeah exactly is it and yet um but so we what do we think of this movie, first of all? What's our vibe going in? I had a really good time with this one. I did too, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, it's too long, but it's almost good.

It's directed by Ridley Scott's brother, Tony. R.I.P., sadly. I was laughing at the concept of Ridley Scott's brother, Tony, not him dying. I want to be very clear rest in peace Ridley Scott's brother Tony is a fun phrase but he did do some

good movies, he did Man on Fire he did Crimson Tides directed by Ridley Scott's brother Tom Scott he directed Top Gun for fuck's sake oh fuck yeah dude alright banger and so what we have here is a sort of Top Gun, for fuck's sake. Oh, fuck yeah, dude. Okay, nice, nice. Alright, banger. Yeah, and so what we have here is a sort of... I guess you can get the sense from it from the first scene, right?

Which is, much like in Breach, we have a conversation with an older white guy who is America. That's right. That's right. Because we see ourselves in a park in Maryland, where John Voight, who is this spooky NSA official, is meeting with the good congressman. His name is Congressman Hammersley. This dude's Ed Markey. He looks like Ed Markey. I think it's worse than that, because we find out later he's a New York Republican,

and his name is Hammersley. This is a fucking Rockefeller. They want a Rockefeller so bad, it's like a principled Republican. Yeah, no such thing anymore, I'm afraid, boys. This man is a Lincoln Project motherfucker. Yes, yes, for sure. But what he's doing is he is obstructing John Voight's desire to do warrantless mass surveillance and to pass the uh the patriot act because it you know it's it's the wrong thing to do in this national security show it's a

bullshit excuse uh and and john voight calls this um liberal hysteria and that immediately to me sets out what the tone of this movie is going to be this is going to be uh sort of 90s democrat ass politics and and and so it proves to be i is going to be uh sort of 90s democrat ass politics and and and so it proves to be i mean i never get the impression that john voight is particularly politically sincere about that he definitely comes across as a guy who would will say whatever to whoever that's true um but what the congressman will not play ball and so he just uh john voight immediately moves to execute like him as like to do a deep state political murder immediately off the bat oh instantly there's a there's a

line i didn't get any um clips from this one because i was watching it on the tv downstairs but um one of his lines is do you read the post which yeah that was coming it strikes me there's also a cool bit where John Voight seems to vaguely threaten to blackmail this congressman. He does. And he calls him and he says, are you blackmailing me? And there's a great bit where he goes, no, of course not. You're a good politician.

Your constituents are lucky to have you. And it's really nice. It's a nice little moment where he kind of implies that he's got dirt on him. And I was like, ooh, intrigue. Oh, oh, oh, oh, they murdered him. Okay. I'm going to blackmail you. No, you won't.

That's right. I'm actually going to kill you. They just kill him instantly. Just sort of moves from one plot to another very quickly, John Voight's character does. He really does. He just has him injected with mysterious chemical and then they dump his car in the water like uh making it look like an accident i think the idea is that he's meant to have had a heart attack yes and then we go straight to some some baffling opening titles the 90s this movie came out in 1998 which

is two years before i was born um that's right that's right that's math. It's the 90s, we've got spinning computers, we've got surveillance footage, we've got landmarks. Love a landmark. We've got so many landmarks, baby. This whole sequence is so 90s. Yeah, everything's got kind of like the dial-up tone mixed into it. There's one other thing, which is there's a motif here, which is this movie is terrified of spy satellites, specifically.

It really is. and so whenever it needs to convey the government is doing evil spying shit it just swoops a big spy satellite past you while it plays some like morse code over it yeah it's very like space race paranoia it's uh yeah and and then so that's one half of the opening titles. The other half is that it's intercut with sort of like America's Wildest Police Chases footage. Yeah, that's kinda weird. Yeah. They couldn't think of any other way to convey, like, pursuit, and so it's just

a bunch of footage of, like, guys running from the cops and being chased down. Yes. And, you know, fair enough, that's the theme of the movie, is Guy runs from cops who are also satellites. So we meet our protagonist, Robert Clayton Dean, Will Smith, who is a labor lawyer in DC. And Will Smith is having a lot of fun playing a nerd in this movie, I'll say that for him. Yeah, I like him in this film, I think he does a great job. It's sort of a departure for him,

because he was like, doing comedic roles before this, and this is like, more or less straight drama, and like, bits of comedy leak out into it. But so, he is investigating this mob boss, Hawley Pintero, played by Tom Sizemore, And my note for Tom Sizemore in this movie is, holy shit is that Tom Sizemore, why is he talking like that? Baffling, yeah, baffling line delivery from Tom on this one. Literally this guy, this guy's whole deal is like, Ayy, oh, whoa! That's his whole character.

I have one drop of Tom Sizemore, and it's a baffling line and a baffling read of that line. For the longest cock sucking, we're going to tempt the swamp. Sure. Okay. Yeah, man. But so Will Smith is, in order to get justice for his clients, he's working with his ex-girlfriend or ex-side piece.

Yeah. She's a lawyer. Rachel Banks. And he gives her cash payments. And in exchange, she is in touch with this mysterious person who we don't know called Brill. Yes. And Brill always manages to turn up the evidence. So Will Smith gives her a big wad of cash and she gives him a videotape from Brill.

This is like a VHS tape, which has the evidence of the mob boss doing corrupt shit on it. Yes, yeah. He's hanging out with the administrators of the pension fund or whatever. So he goes to Pantera's Italian-American legitimate businessman's social club. That's right. We've never done a mob movie on this podcast before and at some point we'll have to do the god yeah yeah yeah we'll have to do a like a mob season but uh it's not starting with this let me tell you um the one thing that

the movie wants you to note is that there is an fbi surveillance post opposite the italian american legitimate businessmen social club for legal activities and you can tell this because there's a guy with a big camera twitching a net curtain anytime anyone goes into the big italian american legitimate businessman social club the other thing to note about this is that everyone knows they're there yes as will leaves the fucking event there's a guy out there going like hey smile for the fbi and points directly at where their stakeout is and then we come back like weeks later and they are still there so this is just it's like two four they're across the street from each other

they're just they're just they're just putting that paycheck, it's fine. I kind of like that, actually. Like, I think there are real examples of this happening. Oh, certainly. So Will Smith goes in there and he tries to, like, blackmail this mob boss, Tom Sizemore, out of controlling the union, with this videotape, and Tom Sizemore's very keen to know who made the tape, but Will Smith won't give him up. Made the fucking tape! Made the fucking tape. Will Smith doesn't even know no uh and so he he says you know i'm gonna give you a week to tell me

who made the tape or i'm gonna kill you which is fair enough this is like portrayed as very low stakes like he's not actually really gonna bother but yeah and the fbi spot will smith leaving this meeting and uh one of them says he doesn't look italian to me which i was like something something i liked about this is that it does explicitly portray the fbi and the mob as being equally racist in that they both refer to will smith by slurs it's like sure that's that's realistic to me. Yeah. Now, they're investigating the mysterious... Well, not mysterious. Actually, why are they even fucking investigating it if it's not mysterious?

I don't see why they're missing. They're not investigating it at all, actually. It's a bunch of cops who have just rolled up to pull this car out of the river, and there's, like, news guys there. And someone happens to spot a guy guy one one of one of the primo guys just taking like looks looks a bit like first season mac from always sunny fuck he does it he's he's his name is zavitz daniel zavitz there's a bird watching hide like directly opposite where the congressman was murdered and so the nature photographer who

runs the bird watching hide comes like not knowing that there's been a death just comes and retrieves the tape from the bird watching hide which presumably has footage of the murder on it yes yeah and this this sets off the sort of like uh first big jason bourne style chase sequence of this movie where we follow this all the way to the NSA, the National Security Agency's command center, where John Voight is busy sort of doing his like, give me good numbers, Jimmy, sort of like round of phone calls to get this surveillance bill passed and is then sort of given the news. Oh, hey, by the the way some guy just has video evidence of you doing the murder uh of assisting congressman so he immediately sets out to to start a cover-up which he has a

baffling phrase here we need two techs with full electronic capabilities two humpty dumpties yeah not quite sure not quite sure what that is. Yeah, no idea. They're like, this guy might have a tape of the murder, and immediately Reynolds is like, get me some Humpty Dumpties and kill this motherfucker right now. Is he asking for two eggs, or is he saying we need all the king's men? Considering for two dudes that roll up afterwards, I think he means get me a pair of dipshits. Yeah, get me a pair of disposable dipshits we can throw under the bus and so they get two guys who are in yes the

marine stockade um and these fucking dudes make my day every time they're on screen do you want to talk about these and krug and they're fucking my name is the krug as the fucking Twinklevoss twins right because these guys are they're just like they're identical except one is much wider in the neck and their job is whatever yeah just sort of like

do goon stuff the haircuts on these guys by the way incredible it's sort of like a like if a flat top was backcombed. It's tremendously weird looking. Who else have they got there, though? Who else works for the NSA? They've got motherfucking Jack Black in that fucking room, baby.

Jack Black is present. I saw Jack Black and I went, holy shit. Look at Jack Black. He's sort of like, he's the computers guy. And there's this huge ensemble cast in this movie, and apparently like 90% of them said yes because they wanted to work with, slight spoiler here, Gene Hackman, who is in this movie. That's fair.

Who doesn't speak to any of them, that rules. And if that isn't a window into the sort of like like status of celebrity in 1998 that you would do a movie purely because you want to hang out with gene hackman of all people i don't know what it's fucking sick like i love gene hackman he was fucking lex luther i mean yeah fair enough yeah do you know what we might as well like say who's the other computer nerd they have in this yeah they also and this this guy hoved into view during a scene later on and caused me to have to pause and think for a while but they have an infant seth green yes yeah got a seth green fresh out the pussy my man is he came out

with like sort of frosted tips slightly spiked hair and wearing yellow oakley's uh yeah he's one of the guys that like hangs out in a surveillance van and just makes comments about... Basically, he just riff-tracks, like, security footage. Yeah, which is what you want when you're doing sort of, like, deniable black-bag operations, is you want to have Seth Green riffs happening. Oh, yeah. But so, what he tells them is,

OK, go put a team together, find this wildlife journalist, get the tape back, and kill him. Hack, tap, go put a team together, find this wildlife journalist, get the tape back, and kill him. Hack, tap, bypass. Exactly. That's right. Meanwhile, we see this wildlife journalist, Zavitz, in his apartment, watching the tape back.

He plays the actual murder, enhanced and like five times, just so you get that he's seen it, and then says, bafflingly... Fuck my duck and having sure that thusly having thusly reacted copies the the tape onto a floppy floppy disk just in time for the goons to show up uh first first he calls his friend who runs a left-wing news desk that's right says yo i've got footage of of abigail thorne taking money from mi6 the royal family the cia etc what no pizza on the street kill this motherfucker now um so he calls his friend on the left-wing news desk and he says yo i've got footage of john

voight um from from the movie lara croft and uh he's he's murdering some congress person yeah um and so the nsa are hearing this and jack black is like you just fucking call the left-wing news desk like hack tab bypass and then i there is one thing um god what did i fucking save this under oh yeah the way he describes this to his friend is that the congressman has been... Negative. Hammersley was professionally wasted under the direction of some anal retentive. Which is okay. I like that there's a clear, like, midline.

Oh, in... Professionally wasted. So it says... This guy was professionally wasted! Recorded from a different room. I was curious to see what the original was yeah this dude got fucking

murked but as you say this like travels down the phone line and triggers John Voight to go okay go and kill this motherfucker right now so the marines go to his house and he escapes with the copied tape at this point we get a chase sequence which involves only the shakiest of cams.

It's good, though. Well, the really funny thing to me and the thing that immediately stretches credulity is one of the Marines sees him leave via the back door and goes, OK, get us get satellite imagery to this latitude and longitude so we can follow this guy along Like a roofline in real time and then we get the big shot of the keyhole satellite whatever swooshing over the earth It's like okay sure fine Meanwhile Will Smith is going shopping he's taking the day off after having threatened a mob boss and he calls I guess his secretary to ask, Do chicks dig lingerie? And when he's told that chicks do dig lingerie,

he goes into the most sexually threatening lingerie store. This place is terrifying. Is this what? Terrifying? It's amazing. Is this what lingerie shops were like in the 90s? We have to get time travel. If you could go into a fucking agent provocateur or whatever

and just have a woman wearing only the lingerie in question just sort of vaguely humiliate you for five to ten minutes, I don't think I would ever leave. Yeah, so he goes into the lingerie shop and all the women who work there he goes into the lingerie shop and like all the women who work there are just in the lingerie um and will smith has this like really quite funny like back and forth he's like awkward with the sales it's it is like very funny and they both do a great job actually the actress in this is like it's very good what's really funny is she's

like oh you're buying it for your wife and i I'm just like, I wrote down, is she clocking him here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would she just look at Will Smith and go, egg? Yeah, it is very funny, but at the same time, this scene quite clearly exists just to show us ass and titties. Yeah, and I'm not opposed to that. Yeah, I mean, he does a pretty solid impression of every dipshit I've ever seen interact with a sex worker

for the first time, which is he just spends the whole time being like, oh, not my penis, though. Yeah, he does, like, Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation shit. He fucking does. He really does. But, like, this scene nudges up the M score.

Yeah, he gets his wife some lingerie that is fitted by looking at another employee and going, that size, I guess? Which is... Yeah, don't buy a bra by looking at someone else's going. That'll do, I think. Yeah, yeah. He didn't prep for this at all.

She asks him his wife's bra size, and he responds to that like he's just been asked for his social security number it's like there's a little tag on the inside anyway so you came in here to buy this man you should have some information whatever so zevits is is doing some parkour over some roofs uh he he ducks through a uh we get the traditional shot of like a busy kitchen having a chase scene run through it it's also a bit racist in that it's a kitchen full of asian chefs who are all yelling and one of them just has a giant thing flambéing yeah this movie has a thing about asian people it does this is one of two weird asian moments in this movie up the c score yes yeah we also see that seth green and some other random dipshit are in the van uh sort of operationally controlling this chase and when

you want to control a situation what you want generally is you want two guys yelling over each other really frenetically because that emphasizes speed uh and that makes it really easy for you to catch up to people yeah you want a lot of radio chatter and you want a lot of it to be like them doing bits yes yeah they're like playing drops down the radio yeah they're honestly they are riffing yeah they're doing callbacks to previous missions it's yeah fucking cia statler and waldorf they got like a good five minutes out of professionally wasted and they're just doing that while the marines are running around the cia clowns professionally wasted so um zavitz manages to evade the the marines quite well, and he rushes into the lingerie store where he runs into Robert, whom he knows from Georgetown.

They went to university together. by Nors West or any of these other like misadventure misunderstanding movies he slips the copy of the disc which is he's put into like a game boy into into Robert's like shopping bag just goes help me runs out

the front door and then Will Smith gives him his business card the interaction is even weirder which is that he runs in he just like grabs him and Will Smith's like, oh, hey, it's you, how you doing? My name's fucking G, whatever the fuck. He just hands him, like, I don't remember his name,

it's Will Smith. He hands him a fucking business card immediately, just sort of reflexively, which I quite enjoy. To be fair, Americans do do that. Like, everyone at VidCon was just like, here's my card, and I'm like, I'm going to put this in the bin. I should get some cards mocked up. But it just says Devon, and then at the bottom there's no contact details, and it'm like, I'm gonna put this in the bin. I should get some cards mocked up. But it just says Devon,

and then at the bottom there's no contact details, and it's like, don't contact me. Oh, that's really funny. So Zavitz runs outside, he steals a bike, there's like a two-minute bike chase, and what's really confusing is that the guys chasing him

are operating on sort of like playground rules. Like, they're all like i'm going to get you they don't try and kill him around yeah exactly um but so what he does is he steals this bike veers across two lanes of traffic jumps the central reservation and gets oh my god aced by a extremely killed my dude gets smirked, full caps. By a fire truck. We see him from the, like, surveillance satellite in GTA 2 sort of vision, from top down, and as a woman says to Will Smith, who comes out to see what's happened... A guy on a bike got cringed.

That's right. But they go and search him, his body body and they can't find the tape on him but they do find Will Smith's business card exactly so Will Smith still unknowing that he's been put in the crosshairs of the NSA

completely tangentially involved yeah it's a classic thing ordinary guy mistaken for super spy kind of thing it's good i think it ties into this what this film is trying to say which i quite like we'll get to later but yeah anyway he goes home to his wife and his kid his kid is playing video games and this movie takes place at christmas so his kid's like oh did you get me a christmas present can i open it can i look in the bag and he's like no no no you can't you

can't you can't yeah and his wife is yelling at the tv because she is very much a liberal she's very much in favor of civil rights privacy rights uh she opposes this bill and will smith is a not interested b thinks she's too invested and c is like in this position of sort of put upon husband who's like obliged to agree to get along uh like the guy on tv who she's yelling at says something about like well sometimes you have to spy on people for national security and he kind of like agrees with him and his wife frowns at him and he's like yeah i know what i mean is that's unacceptable uh and so as we'll see although this movie is about will smith getting proven wrong here the sort of starting point and the starting point to make you relate to will smith as like an everyman

is that caring about privacy or civil liberties is for women and also gay and also you can care way too much about it and also like women am i right? Like, wives. Wives be watching the TV and yelling at her. I hate it when my wife is mad about her civil liberties being eroded. Fellas, come home when your wife is mad about her civil liberties being eroded. I mean, what's all that about? I hate it when my explicitly immigrant black wife is mad about civil liberties being taken away. Am I right, fellas? It's very strange.

So, meanwhile, back at the NSA, we get some computer. First, they just casually fucking drop in that the left-wing news guy is dead. They killed him off-screen. Murdered. He's so dead. Deceased. That's like, easily dead.

Professionally wasted. That's right. Professionally wasted. So so instead what they do is John Voight essentially goes to Jack Black and goes do computers on this until we can find out whether or not we can bully Will Smith to an early grave this sequence is like

fucking CSI New York shit it's unbelievable what Jack Black does is he says enhanced to something so much. He gets a fucking security camera and he goes, rotate the view. And I'm like, how the fuck are you doing that?

And he does it. What would have to have happened for this to work is for them to have picked up the camera and moved it on a track along the ceiling. That's the effect that you get um this lingerie store the security camera setup

is like in the matrix where they just have cameras in that perfect circle so that you can do like special effects so that if you tap into the security camera you just go the whole way around yeah yeah it's fine and then he brings up a 3D model of Will Smith's bags to double check whether or not something's been put in.

Yeah, he's rotating a shopping bag in his mind. I'm rotating a Will Smith in my brain. It's unbelievable. He's passing the Kajiati in real time. Find a computer to be indispensable. And so having thus enhanced, right, they still don't know. Which I like that at least

even if it's advancing the idea that this computer shit is at all plausible, I like that it doesn't work and you still have to guess. Yeah, they do all this insane computer data shit and then they just go, oh, send the fucking Twinklevosses over. Send the goons. That fucking twinkle bosses over send the goons like

that's kind of the that's kind of the vibe of the movie because as without spoiling what happens at the end what we do see later is like all your fancy surveillance and computers it's not as good as like having somebody with insider knowledge yeah which it's not as good as having one homie that's right why don't you simulate a fucking bro? Why don't you simulate some fucking pussy, dude? Why don't you enhance your relationship with your fellow man? Why don't you hack, tap, and bypass

some fucking pussy, dude? So they sent the goons... I'm on like the Matrix matrix typer top 10 pussy hacks it's your own time you're wasting instead of spelling my name out of what i'm eating pussy i'm doing like the the descending's pussy you're eating? I know the Matrix is telling me this pussy is juicy. Well, welcome to Kill James Bond.

We're doing the Matrix. No, we're not. We're not. We're not. So they send the dudes around and you can tell the dudes are gonna arrive because the entire previous scene is will smith being like everyone except me leave the house now yes yeah his kids go over to his kids mate's house his wife goes out to drop them off he's left alone with the shitty little dog that he hates because women be getting shitty little dogs

that's true four or five in la in LA. They're all in various handbags. And so the twins arrive disguised as detectives and they claim they're investigating the creaming of this guy, Zalas. They're investigating an officer involved creaming.

Not even an officer involved, it was a fucking fire department involved. Yeah, fucking fire department yeah fire department involved creaming yeah the fdny has creamed this dude if you ain't got any information that can help us fuck we've not even reached the inciting incident sorry no no no but so essentially they go have have you got the tape uh and he goes no and also I'm not gonna let you search my shit, I don't have anything. Come back with a warrant. And they try asking him, you know, are you buying lingerie? Is it for Rachel Banks, the woman you're having an affair with?

And he bracens this out with what I knew immediately must be a drop. If I do a little cross-dressing on the weekends, you know, you'd be surprised how a nice pair of edible panties can make a guy feel sexy which he's right but yeah he's fitting i mean i always found edible panties to be kind of like that's a fad thing it depends which type because you can get ones for like obviously they're like a little candy that you can get for like a bracelet or something and those are the better part of fine, but the ones that are made out of, like, fucking Sidewinder shit, like, unacceptable, completely

unacceptable. I feel like I don't need, like, the bribe of candy to eat pussy. That's right. I'm like, get this shit out of my fucking way, I need to get to the pussy. Doing, like, delayed gratification. The thing that I want to eat is not the panties like

you know what i mean the edible panty is just like it's like parsley right you just push it to the side before you get it to eating but the thing is right these two dudes which this is one of my favorite parts about the movies these two dudes go can we just double check for you wherever something got put in that

bag and he went not without a warrant and it cuts to seth Green in the fucking surveillance van, and he goes, he's good. These guys killed a fucking congressman, dude. But so instead, having now- Oh, fuck, he's right, we don't have a warrant. Yeah, what they do instead is they wait for him to leave the house, and then they put bugs in everything and then trash the place.

Most notably, they steal his blender, which is a big deal to Will Smith because... Some people meditate, some people get massages. I blend. This movie forgets about this halfway through, but, like, it's his thing. He likes blending various juices. He loves his smoothie. They put, like, they put a bunch of bugs in his home and in his clothes and stuff and john voight says and this is quite interesting he says we're gonna trash this guy's reputation um because in case he decides to go public we are gonna ensure that

it's easy for everyone to dismiss him as a liar what's curious uh what's a curiously progressive idea from john voight here is his example because he talks about how uh you have to discredit him because uh i know that it works i've seen like credibility is the only currency that matters and his example for this is i have seen sex offenders go free because the victim was a sex worker and it's like oh shit that's actually quite a good example of how you can discredit someone and how that's a bad thing. But then that's, you know, what they do instead is they destroy his life, right? They leak photos of him having lunch with...

Rachel. Rachel, with Rachel, his ex. Just having lunch. Literally just having lunch. As we find out, he has previously cheated on his wife with rachel and so he i think presumably has like sworn he would never see her again they went through a year of counseling and so when she sees the uh the the photos of them together she knows that he's been lying to her um she doesn't think to question the fact that you know she's been

literally couriered photos like glossy photos of of him with her but like he gets fired his bank accounts and his credit cards all get shut down and this is why i quite like this film and i think it's saying something which more people should say nowadays like like there's so much mass surveillance these days and a lot of people seem to have this attitude of like if you don't have anything to hide there's nothing wrong with it and what this movie says quite clearly is like no then there will be little innocuous details in your life like having lunch with someone that if they are taken out of context and presented in a negative light can make you appear guilty even if you've done nothing wrong like to a certain extent, your guilt or innocence

is a function of how much the government is paying attention to you. So it's bad for them to have the power to do that anyway, even if you've got nothing to hide. Yeah, you can use innuendo, you can just straight up manufacture stuff. Yeah. I think that's a very good point, and I agree completely. However, one thing I will say is that he gets fired from his Washington, Dhington dc law firm for

having an affair which is funny in and of itself yeah very odd that but then when he gets fired they ask him have you been having an affair and he asks one of the partners you ever beat off in the shower brian you ever have any homosexual thoughts brian should have just gone yep the dude playing brian also like really really sells that really well because he Brian should have just gone, yep. The dude playing Brian also like really, really sells that really well. Cause he is so clear. Like,

Oh, what am I? Why am I involved? The reason Will Smith asks that. And again, this is a scene I like is Brian's like, that's not relevant. Will Smith is like, that's right.

It's none of my fucking business. Yeah. It's good. But so his wife kicks him out there's some really odd dutch angle editing in this scene only the weirdest of cameras this movie isn't shot very well like the cinematography yeah it's the thing doesn't really know what to do if it's not spinning around a national monument no he meets rachel again this whole meeting is spied on of course oh yeah Oh yeah, like extensively. They're going to really like exacting detail

of exactly how spied on this meeting is. Yes. Like everyone's got a fucking shotgun mic. There's a homeless guy with a shotgun mic. There's dudes in all the buildings around. And for quite just a sort of standard conversation between these two people. Yes.

But immediately, because they're having the conversation, that is spread out onto the news again used as further uh to push this guy away from his wife and kids he's also accused of having of having mob ties uh we also see that all of his cards all of his bank accounts are frozen so he can't even get a hotel um he's getting gas lit by everyone on earth yeah at this stage he thinks it's the mob he thinks it's the he thinks it's the mafia who are doing this because he doesn't know about the NSA because he's just he's still a blue pill libcuck yeah he still doesn't even know he has this fucking tape so he's just like fuck this mob guy has a lot of connections huh very strange so he says to Rachel I need to meet Brill Brill's your guy I need to know who it

is and she's like well i only ever meet him like on a ferry i do dead drops on a ferry so yeah um so he goes to a ferry yeah he goes to a ferry and uh he is immediately met by gabriel burn appearing in this movie yeah and gabriel burn effortlessly works him he goes hey are you the guy i'm meeting and will smith spills everything he goes oh holy shit are you burn uh rachel uh are you burn are you brill are you brill uh rachel sent me uh thanks for doing all of that pi work for me um here's everything that's going on some trust uh this fake brill here he he pretends to have fished out one of the tracking devices on Will Smith at this point.

There are like six tracking devices on Will Smith. He takes his shoe off and he's like, look, they've got a fucking tracker in here, man. I really, really like this because I didn't immediately realize that this was a fake Brill. That's good. It's well done. It got set up to not notice.

It's very clever. And then later on when we meet the real Brill, Gene Hackman, Will Smith's like, but I just met Brill. And he's like, did he tell you his name was Brill? Or did you say that and he agreed with it? And it's like, oh, my fucking God. It was good. It was slick.

It was really, really good. He gets into Brill's fake taxi, or fake Brill's fake taxi. That's right. And he's in the back, and he's talking about how the NSA has ruined his life. Can you have something for this? They took everything from me, you know. They took my family. It's really funny, because he's like one day into this,

and he's already like weepy. Yeah, it's like they took his family, and what has actually happened is his wife is mad at him, and he's been out of the house for like a day. His wife's mad at him for hanging out with a woman that he cheated on her with and promised he would never go back to like this is a legitimate l he's taking on this one bud don't tell you that a friend of a friend saw graham then henry's the name went up to him did i tell you guys this no oh no friend of a friend saw graham then henry went up to him in

public um and said your wife didn't leave you because of trans people, your wife left you because you're an arsehole. And he just went, okay, groomer, and was just like yelling at her as she walked away. Fucking bodied. Bitch made. Atrocious. It's always a fun, safe, and legal thrill

to make fun of dickheads to them in person. Republican senators, things of this nature. So they're being chased, the fake taxi is being chased by a guy in a pickup truck who he assumes is the mob or the NSA or someone. But then just as fake Brill is about to shoot him, they're rammed from behind by this pickup truck. About to professionally waste him.

About to professionally waste him. About to professionally waste him. And that's Gene Hackman, that's real Brill. Yes. Who more or less sort of bundles him into a 20th century's greatest criminal mind! Who more or less sort of like bundles him into a hotel elevator,

takes some of the bugs off him, and puts them in a little crisp packet, because of the reflective off him and puts them in a little crisp packet because of the reflective foil and explains to him what the NSA is which it seems quaint now is the thing but this movie in 1998 the NSA was not very publicly well known

and I think a lot of people watching this movie would have been like the NSA what? I didn't even know this federal agency existed there's so many federal agencies is the fucking thing like there's so many alphabet boys it's not it's not helpful if you don't know all of them yeah but we work for all of them that's right that's right well each of us works for a different one yeah the nsa occupied the same sort of profile in 1998 as something like the ISA might now. Yeah, exactly. Intelligent support activity.

The kind of thing that you've heard of if you're me. Yeah, the assay group. The real FBI. Yeah, the real... The CIA clowns. We've got to do a series of movies again. Yeah, I miss that too. But so, he takes them up on the roof, and he goes, the NSA are spying on you.

The NSA spy on anybody. It's called mass surveillance. And it's, like, I guess you can think about it as, it's wild that in 1998 people would have been scandalized by any of this and how how bad things have gotten now that if you go oh the federal government can read all of your emails it can listen to all of your phone calls notwithstanding all the stuff that we've talked about about mass surveillance and how it works before and what i'm going to say about that later i think if you say that to most people now they just kind of like go so what you know that's that's like yeah widely reported like you know that jack black can

just create a 3d render of your pussy in a computer based on a still image and everyone's like yeah i believe it yeah um but because i'm not doing it he won't stop it was it was genuinely so brutal that edward snowden leaked leaked a shitload of information about mass surveillance, which had, in the end, no impact. How are you gonna say that he leaked a shitload of information about your pussy? Yeah, he leaked a shitload of information about my pussy. And then fled to Russia. Edward Snowden leaked 3D renders of my pussy.

He's shit. That's right. I don't believe this. But so, because Gene Hackman has not found all of the bugs, the NSA is still trailing Will Smith. And Gene Hackman goes, okay, stay away from me, stay away from Rachel, don't make any phone calls, you'll probably be dead soon, so bye, and leaves. And what we get then is a chase scene through the hotel, but we have to do some more comedy

Asians. Yeah, most of this chase scene through the hell-tel is really some more comedy asians yeah this most of his chase scene through the hotel is really good but there is a hotel from hell this is an hotel holy shit it's a house of a dead three um he's doing his best all right but there there is um yeah there's just one aspect to this scene which i really am not a fucking huge fan of which is as he's going down this hotel he realizes that he's trapped right there are some guys coming up behind him in front of him and he just like knocks on the door and like gets let in by the guy because they think he's room service

mr woo um and while he's in there he he's just like glad handing he's like ah the hotel just wants to just double check that you're all doing so well. And then he eventually just gives in. He's like, fuck, I definitely still have at least one tracker in my clothes. So he just starts stripping down to the briefs, down to the tank top. And Mr. Wu's wife, Mrs. Wu, naturally, begins to celebrate as he he's doing this and it's not subtitled anyway so as i said on the fucking siriana episode it's not it's being used to add like audio confusion to the scene yes this is really fucking bad it's really bad she's like like tipping him like money she thinks he's a stripper yeah it's yeah it's like used as comic relief

while the guys are trying to get in from the outside yeah so there are guys shouting from the outside he's shouting this this uh lass is also like making a lot of noise as well and it's all it's supposed to give you a feeling of claustrophobia and panic and it does but i i really don't like that they're using foreign speech to get that across it's really really bad you could have gone with Dutch right the set up is like they're foreign

they don't know what's happening do the same joke from Super Troopers where it's a German couple you'd like to party French, German, Dutch you didn't have to do it with a couple from a racial minority. Sure. That's right.

But so, Will Smith, like, escapes, he steals a bathrobe, he locks himself in a supply closet and then sets the hotel on fire in order to get himself out. He accidentally starts a bigger fire than he meant to. Yeah, he's, like, rescued in an ambulance, and he ends up stealing... He grabs a cop's service weapon. He does. It's safe and legal. You can do it. That goes a lot better than I thought it was going to.

Every time I do that, I get in trouble. Yeah, he just, like... It's like a zoom in on the cop's gun, and it's like, I could grab that. And he does, and it works out perfectly for him. Take a chance. There's a moral here for you, the viewer, take a chance, it always works. Who knows what'll happen. Yeah.

Um, so he lets himself out of the ambulance at gunpoint, and we get a long chase scene. No, legally, this is not legal advice. No. Uh, we get a long, long chase scene, through some tunnels, uh, we get a lot more Seth Green riffing, uh, at one point, point he like descends into the sewers and it turns into like a sewer chase level yeah yeah that's odd moral there was a sewer man like yeah he just goes down into the fucking sewer and i like you got him there's no way out of here so he goes everyone like chasing him down he comes back up again this is really good right because

what's what's powerful at this point is that the instigating incident, this fucking, like, the footage of a dude murking Ed Markey from earlier, is, like, so fucking far removed from Will Smith that it's not even in your mind at this point. He doesn't have it. He doesn't even know where it is. He's just sort of yeah completely unaware of why this is happening so it really you're fully in his like mind state of just complete panic and confusion it's it's very effective yeah uh but he he ends up switching places with i think a construction worker yes he does which is really good he runs up to his construction worker who's just having a good time like cleaning the ground it seems and he just like holds him at gunpoint and the sentence he uses, he goes, normally I wouldn't do this. Yeah, sure.

They say that a lot, I bet. I do a little cross-dressing. So he takes the guy's clothes. He switches clothes with him. Yeah, he does. He does a little cross-dressing. And then he goes home and meets his wife and he's like, He takes the guy's clothes. He switches clothes with him. Yeah, he does. He does a little cross-dressing. Yeah.

A little cross-dressing. And escapes. And then he goes home and he meets his wife. And he's like, I did not have an affair. I didn't touch that woman. Yep. Here's a gun. Yep. She's wearing the lingerie that he got her for Christmas already.

Very strange scene. It's just so we can have a woman in lingerie, isn't it? Yeah. And they do have quite a little quick figure out because he's like somebody thinks there was something in the bag that i brought home but there's definitely nothing there unless our son went looking for his christmas presents and took it and they're like oh fuck the kid has it they have they have like good chemistry too yeah it's a nice scene well that's really i didn't see it coming i was like oh fuck like yeah you did kind of set it up well done um so will

smith rides with the nanny to go and pick up uh their child jack black pervs on her yes yeah there's a line here i i have this line um as as the nanny is like, leaving the house, Jack Black, unprompted, goes, I didn't shave her legs, Jesus! Women like that are so hot! Batman voice, then you're gonna love me. I mean, I think there's something here in that this is, like, potentially, this is a line about how inherently sexualized and creepy it is to surveil anyone but especially a woman right but what this actually what this actually comes off as and what it's written as is it's funny for a guy to be attracted to like women with body hair that's right because it's really not good um but so he he gets the like game boy with the the tape back from his son. And then sort of learning his tradecraft on the fly,

he gets the surveillance van moved by calling the cops on them, which is nice. Yeah, that's quite funny. It's funny to do that. You should. Yeah, absolutely. If you think you're being spied upon, call the cops, you know. Yeah.

There's a van outside that hasn't moved all day. I think people be doing drugs in there can you just go double check yeah um and like what was good is that they the the guys in the van here the police yeah yeah that's us but so he he breaks into rachel's apartment to find that uh she has been not not not even suicided but he is being framed for her murder they've taken his clothes from the hotel they have like strewn them around her body she's been professionally wasted yeah she has been professionally wasted remember the woman from this movie who hasn't been in it for like 15 minutes fridge professionally wasted um fridged character development for Will, right? Yeah. Also, there are photographs around her flat of her with Gene Hackman.

Yeah, and he goes, wait a second, that's famous actor Gene Hackman. I think he'll be in a movie with him. Yeah, he'll be in this movie in a minute. Is that Lex Luthor? I want to apologise to Gene Hackman. Is that the guy from Mississippi Burning? Or the estate of Gene Hackman, if he happens to be dead.

I haven't double-checked. I did it again. I saw Gene Hackman. I was like, oh, yeah, Robert De Niro. And I just thought it was Robert De Niro for the entire time. Can we make the episode out, the picture of Gene Hackman with Robert De Niro in the Mark Strong font? He's Robert De Niro-coded. I don't know.

This is my best tip. He's Robert De Niro-coded and a minor. Robert De Niro-coded minor. Robert De Niro coded. I prefer we use the term Italian-Americans. Well done. Oh, for fuck's sake. We also get a moment at home with Jon Voight, where he's being extremely normal, drinking a big glass of milk.

Voight, where he's being extremely normal, drinking a big glass of milk. And we see his wife, right, who is kind of a Lady Macbeth figure, she's like, you know, you could have made deputy director in two years or three years. But the problem is, the casting. What they've done is they've given John Voight an insanely hot wife. Yeah, it's Skylar from fuckin' Breaking Bad. It doesn't work i because look put it this way right if i'm if i'm john voight in this movie i would never go to work at the at the nsa no because i'd be too busy drinking the sweat out of her fucking shoes it's no it's unbelievable

he walks into the bedroom and like skylar white is in there and i just was like secretary like i just there was no part of my brain that was like these two are in a relationship no no and yeah in the 3d render of the pussy exactly yeah um fronting it out like a fucking specter mask fuck me so uh so will smith he goes to find the real brill again he looks good in this scene he's looking really good he's gone like full undercover dude mode so he's right he's got like the long coat yeah yeah he looks a bit like aiden pierce um no he looks a little bit like somebody from the matrix but like this is two years before the matrix which is presumably why he was considered for the role of neo and indeed offered the the role of Neo. Speaking of being offered roles, this is

well within the Kill James Bond bailiwick, this movie, because they wanted Old Connery for this. I love it when something's within my bailiwick. Old Connery! Old Connery was working for the NSA.

I'm assuming not to play Will Smith. It's called Mash Reveal. I find a computer indispensable Indispensable I'm logging on to the internet No they wanted Old Connery for real brill Gene Hackman who is very grumpy

He doesn't want anything to do with Will Smith Until he finds out that Rachel Has been killed And he's like a father figure to her we don't find out why yet but they go to the bat cave yes yeah well first they go to a service station where will smith immediately blows their cover by making a phone call to his wife i think it is just to be like hey you know just checking in it's been a day since I've seen you. He's a wife guy. Yeah, immediately he does. He's a wife guy.

That's sweet. What's nice about this is the choice to film the entire inside of the convenience store from the security camera's perspective. Yeah, that's good. Which is really good. So we go to the Batcave, the Baltimore Batcave, which is a Faraday cage. And Gene Hackman explains the nsa again and he explains the concept of mass surveillance and signals intelligence more generally yes and i mean i'm

gonna do alice analysis again because i have to let's go so we talked before in the born movies about how there's a difference between mass data collection and mass data interpretation, and how the finished product of intelligence that you deliver to people is stuff that you've collected and you've sorted and you've analysed, and that what most mass surveillance is doing is collecting what GCHQ calls unselected data. It's just everything. And then you search that for the stuff that you want to find. In many ways, like, the current environment for mass surveillance is much worse than what

Gene Hackman describes now, because of the internet. But, it's still not the way that he describes it, which is, you use any kind of keyword, you say anything on the phone that's being understood in real time, because it just isn't, because it can't be. That has to go through a person at some point and inevitably it's going to be some, if you're lucky, early 20s analyst who is badly overworked anyway, and who has to differentiate. Like, if you feed that person, or that, you know, group of 300 people, every instance of somebody tweeting in Minecraft that day, and then go, okay, pick out all the people who actually want to kill a Supreme Court justice, that's, it's a very difficult task, and there's a difference.

Hell yeah, base! And give them a fave. I'm just saying that the process of intelligence collection that starts with this unselected data is it's more involved than just the government is listening to you all the time

in our jobs working for the intelligence agency we see so many 3D renders of pussies every day that we're just desensitized to it I've got like 3 monitors all just 3D renders of pussies it's yeah it's unfortunate it's rotating a pussy in my mind i have to be like which one of these pussies wants to take down the federal government which one of these pops the most that's what the government wants to know

you actually have an analogy to to warrantless uh warrantless surveillance and like mass data collection in the form of Google, most notably. Google, Meta, all these companies, they collect huge amounts of data for much the same reasons, which is to say, to have it and then go back and look through it. And in the same way that Google might scrape all of your data in order that someone might Google it, the NSA might take all of your metadata so that they can put it through their own search engine xqscore or whatever um but yeah no it's it's it works exactly yeah um but I mean one thing I will say is that and a point in this movie's favor is that the NSA hated it when it came out it was it was considered to have done huge public relations

damage to them um as well it might have done more films should do huge public relation damage to government departments i feel yeah oh absolutely like the critique of this is is technical rather than philosophical like the we know that the nsa has been and is doing and will continue to do a lot of evil shit um and is you know, if anything, much less troubled about it than Jon Voight is in this movie. So the NSA hated it because it was, you know, not because it was particularly accurate in depicting them, but because, you know, it got closer to the spirit of the thing

and made them look like assholes. Yeah, exactly. When was the last time a film came out that thoroughly discredited a government department? I mean, I, Daniel Blake, is the most recent one I can think of. Yeah, it's been a minute. Yeah, it's becoming more okay to do it again recently. The fact

that this is a 1998 movie is definitely the only reason they were able to make a movie where the bad guy just categorically is the NSA. Because, holy shit, you could not do that a couple of years afterwards yeah it's not like it's a rogue department within the nsa it's just the real thing doing what i meant to do

we do kind of get an attempt to draw this distinction a little bit in that uh gene hackman looks up john voight uh he he looks him up on like uh the internal phone book or whatever and he goes this guy isn't an operator he's not tactical like i was when i was in the nsa he's a politician yeah yeah he doesn't respect the troops yeah exactly um and you know this is this is sort of his own private ass covering exercise but because because will smith made a phone call uh this is enough to lead the nsa back to the baltimore bat cave at this point they have decrypted the tape and they've learned the truth of the murder yes i completely forgot that because it's like sort of almost

ancillary at this point who cares about this the tape actually becomes not a problem in a minute um but there's a there's when they find out that like voight is is behind this um they they read out his birthday and his birthday is yes i literally have this uh go right ahead my love 9 11 1998 let's have it again it was 9 11 this this movie predicted 9-11 predicted 9-11 I do a little cross dressing that's honestly said with the cadence of we do a little trolling

yeah it really is so they attack and Gene Hackman blows up the Batcave yes and there's another car chase Will Smith gets set on fire there's a cat in the Batcave but it's okay don't worry it's fine because every time it's on screen they do like a pathetic little mew noise over the top so you remember the cats there also we get an example of something that i always love in a movie which is

the cat is the calmest cat i've ever seen in my life being picked up but to add a little bit of threat they dub over the sound of like an angry cat and you can see that it's just not that okay it's really good i love that shit um so we get a car chase um they eventually evade them by by like a ducking between some conrail in fact trains but in the course of this, the car gets set on fire and it melts the disc, which is now useless. The tape is now destroyed. Yeah, there's no video evidence anymore of this congressman getting Professionally wasted.

So, what they then do is they have a bit of a fight. Gene Hackman apologises and says I get cranky when my blood sugar is low would you like to make people's war in a Maoist sense upon the National Security Agency and Will Smith goes you son of a bitch absolutely the NSA figure out who Gene Hackman is and they're like

he was in Mississippi Burning with Willem Dafoe he was in Superman like 1, 2, 3 and 4 respect the troops his partner was Rachel's father so he was in superman like one two three and four um respect the troops uh his partner was rachel's father so he was he was abandoned in iran he got jason born he got fucking george cluny yeah it doesn't quite make any sense but one thing i do like is that when he's when he tells will smith this we don't get the sort of like principled spy he's like no i loved it i really liked it uh i understand i don't even blame them for you know for burning me that was fine that was what they had to do yeah there's a nice uh there's a nice

memory says um you know the job is kind of so-so but the people are really lovely and like you get to travel and i was like oh it's kind of like a realistic down-to-earth uh description of what it's like being a sort of evil spy or a podcaster. But so, he then explains the concept of people's war in a Maoist sense, he explains the concept of guerrilla warfare, which is, you know, they're large, so they're unwieldy, you're small and mobile and you can strike unexpectedly, and you can use their own weapons against them, which they do, they take the surveillance devices that they've gotten off of Will Smith, and they use them to bug a congressman who is in favour of this surveillance bill.

Again, this is another thing that doesn't quite make sense, right, is the sort of, not named as such, but the Patriot Act in this movie, is that if the NSA can do all of this shit anyway, and we see them do it, what difference does it make to legalise legalize it well because governments always legalize the things that they do already right so like the the new like police and crime bill legalizes a lot of the sort of horrific things that british police have been doing for a while the nationality and borders bill legalizes the brutal treatment that we've been doing for a while it's just a way of like because like legal challenges take time to bring right and it's just a way of like heading those off at the pass. Yeah, and it's sort of law's sanction, I suppose. But I guess to me it hits differently for something that's an explicitly clandestine activity.

Also, there's a line in here, because they videotape the congressman having an affair with a staffer. And Gene Hackman jokingly says to Will Smith, I think you're too young to watch this part here. And he goes, yeah, so is she, which is a line that hits very differently post-Epstein. Not great. I mean, whatever, that's not... It is very funny that Gene Hackman goes, okay, let's go to war against the NSA.

Step one, docks a congressman. He just does that from his laptop in the van. He's like, all right, let's go to war against the NSA. Step one, docks a congressman. He just does that from his laptop in the van. He's like, alright, it's time. Yeah. He embraces Devon Thorpe. That's right. They do it to John Voight too. They give John Voight a taste of his own medicine by making it look like he's having an affair. Yeah.

His insanely hot wife doesn't understand why their bank accounts are suddenly being frozen and why he's getting flowers from, you know, mysterious admirers and stuff that's that's a fucking flight that's a great idea i really went down i don't want to discredit someone who's going to send them flowers being like thank you for making a 3d render of my pussy last night uh we we also do get the distinction after all between the like good nsa and the bad nsa because we see that John Voight is about to get in trouble at work. The NSA director, who, correctly, is an admiral,

is like, you know, if this is at all sanctioned... Because the congressman finds the bug they put on him, as they intended him to do. He goes, you know, if anyone is running this privately, they're going to go to fucking prison off of this something i wanted to discuss a little and i i got somewhat distracted and forgot to bring it up is that the entire time that they're in the diner talking about like what they've lost in doing people's war against it the film keeps cutting to a woman feeding her kids on a different table in the diner. And it's so very like,

I miss wife. I wish wife was here. This is bullshit. Release my wife. Release wife. Sorry, you're right. Release my wife. So Gene Hackman arranges a meeting with Jon Voight

and he appears to turn Will Smith in. He's like, I want my old life back. This is where Will Smith is. This is where the tape is. I want my back pay, which is like $1.8 million. And John Voight turns it around on him. John Voight gives this big speech about democracy and surveillance and stuff. And we quickly discover that he's filibustering.

He's playing for time because they're closing in on Will Smith's's location as he's doing this and i was like oh fuck like john voight one step ahead well done it's very good uh and and so what they end up doing is capturing the both of them uh in in the back of the surveillance van and and john voight tries to like it starts raining thematically within seconds of them getting captured. It's really funny. Will Smith gets captured and immediately is, like, pissing it down. Yeah. So John Voight tries to interrogate him about where the tape is,

shoots Gene Hackman in the hand. This whole time it's being, like, secretly recorded by... By Jack Black. By Jack Black, who has had an attack of conscience i guess um yeah or an attack of self-preservation something it's never it sort of implies that that was facilitated by by these two guys who are just like this real name gene hackman please help me gene hackman this is like how could you do this you've killed these people is everyone here okay with that you all realize he's killed people for this right and immediately jack black goes oh shit recording my

boss yeah it's nice it's uh he's like i am now recording locally and it is it is quite fun because it's kind of like well if you record everybody and you don't trust anybody then don't be surprised when people don't trust you and they give you the bit of a taste of your own medicine, John. It sucks to get recorded, doesn't it, big man? But John Voight's like, yo, where the tape at, though? Yeah, and Will Smith goes, who's the only other person I know? My wife. It's with this Italian guy.

Yo, I dropped off with this Italian guy. It's at the Totally Legitimate Business Club and you have to come in with me and get it. And so when they get there, the FBI surveillance post, of course, noticed them, because surveillance can be good and useful. You just have to use it to your advantage. And so they spot them going in,

and then Gene Hackman contrives an excuse. He makes like he's going to throw up in the van, so that they see him come out of the van with his, like, shot hand. He's, like, disguised as a cop to try and, like, force the FBI to raid the place. Which does work. But yeah, on the inside, Will is there and he's just like lying by omission. It's like the Italian-American guy is just like, hey, what's this fucking...

Who's this guy? I don't give a shit. I love this fucking scene. I love it. This is where the guy does say, For the longest cock-sucking with an attempt to swallow... It's real Godzilla vs. Kong shit, right? Because he just walks in and he's like, this guy wants his tape back. It's Fed Godzilla vs. Kong shit, right? Because he just walks in and he's like, this guy wants his tape back.

It's Fed vs. Mob. Which immediately makes Voight think that this is the guy he's dropped the tape off with and makes the Italian-American guy think that this is the guy that made the tape of him. And now they're both unbelievably mad at each other. It's so contrived. It's really funny, though, because you've got, like, one half of the table is all these mob guys who are like,

hey, oh! And on the other half, you've got, like one half the table is all these like mob guys who like hey oh and on the other hand you've got like john voight and jack black and in the middle you've got will smith it's a really fucking good scene it's so it's they're getting to a mexican stand-up of course they do which i mean i we we've known this was coming for a while and I only have one thing to say normally I would be shot for being Italian but they all shoot each other Will Smith survives completely unscathed it's very badly

Will Smith goes into that scene like I'm in the process of dealing with these guido motherfuckers and so he does and he fuck me does he my god does he they My God, does he? They are dealt with. Everybody gets killed apart from Jack Black, who is, like, lightly wounded. Gene Hackman escapes.

He Jason Bournes. He does the thing of, like, running between, like, the camera and a moving vehicle and just disappears. And Jack Black survives and gives the FBI the recording of John Voight being like, I'm John Voight and I love to do crime. And he says, oh, I thought it was all a training operation. I had nothing to do with any of this. You know, the FBI is the rescue, the upstanding moral federal agency, which has never spied on anyone. Thank God for the cops. And Will Smith is cleared.

He goes home to his wife. And she's like, who watches The Watchman, Will Smith? And his house is bugged. gene hackman bugged his house in order to send him a message that's like hey how's it going i'm in aruba or whatever i'm on the beach which is you know normalize bugging your best friend's house to send them a little like thank you card as a joke. Brick. Chimp. Things of this nature. Yes, exactly. A standoff between the Mafia, the NSA, and the FBI.

I just call that an argument on an episode of Kill James Bond. Brick. Let me bust it! We have a science- based surveillance system on this podcast let's wrap it up let's corral some closing thoughts this movie

this podcast as a whole is about masculinity do any of us have any thoughts about what this movie says about masculinity being a man is about not caring about civil rights until you're literally forced to. Women have tiny dogs and be caring about civil rights.

It's about missing your wife when you're away from her for more than like a day. It's about ass and titties. It is. It's definitely ass and titties on display. A three-year-old of a pussy. I do a little cross-dressing. Devin, do you have any thoughts about how this film relates to masculinity?

I think I weighed it up earlier, but I really appreciate how on the nose the scene is where they're talking about what they've lost, and it keeps just showing a woman taking care of some kids. Because it's such like a, look at these two hard men, they're missing that feminine tenderness in their life. It's such like a, it's like, oh. Come on. Everything politically has gotten much worse

since this movie. We've become inured to much worse and much more intrusive surveillance. Both in a mass sense and in a targeted sense. And and you know like three years after this movie 9-11 happened sorry no like three years after this movie 9-11 happened and the the patriot act got passed and like all the shit that was you know an unthinkable worst case scenario in this movie has just already been legal for 21, 22 years.

But I remember when all these increased surveillance measures came in when I was two. And I remember at the time being told that they were temporary and would be withdrawn once the threat has passed. So we look forward to that happening any day now.

There's a great episode of Philosophy about that. It's always temporary. you if you read your your schmidt you all know that you know the the power of the state is to define a you know a state of exception uh but uh we already have 3d render of your pussy we have a 3d we have a 3d render of your pussy on this podcast it's called the sc System. I don't know what I was saying. For sexism, cultural insensitivity, unprovoked violence, misogyny.

Smarm, I think, is the first one, but yes. Oh yeah, so it is. Sexism and misogyny. I just care about women so much that I'm willing to dedicate two of our four rating systems.

Sexism, chicks, women, and misogyny. Wait, are you spelling women with a U? It was women. Uteruses. Uterus havers. Uterus having women. Some men have a uteri, but mainly women. That's right.

Some men do. I know some yeah they do so do i uh of course so do i smum cultural cultural insensitivity unprovoked violence misogyny how smarmy would we say that this movie is uh seth green is always doing bits yeah yeah but it's like that's a bad thing because he's sarcastic and they steal his blender um i mean will smith does some bits uh he just he says some things he says didn't secrete it into any of my bodily orifices he said he says I do a little cross-dressing Change the configuration of Dean's packages. You ever have any homosexual thoughts, you know, just a few things like that the movie

Isn't sucking itself off that hard. That's right is the thing Okay, which to me is quite a low smum. It's relatively, like, po-faced. One or two? I could do a one. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, why not? Cultural insensitivity. Chicks. Hoo boy.

Well, I mean, first of all, it's crimes against the Italian-American people. Immediately bump it up to a seven, and then also it's racist against Asians, so, like... I'm gonna go deal with these Guido motherfuckers. 25. Yeah, it's not great. Just specifically that scene

in the hotel bumps it up by like three points to me because come the fuck on. Four? Five? I don't know. Four. Yeah, four. I'm happy. Unprovoked violence? Very little. Like, he only even shoots back at them a couple of times when they're

when they're chasing him yeah true oh they cannot provoke this guy into violence so there's yeah he runs he runs none if anything yeah he's he's like doing sort of north by northwest instead of like any kind of action hero mold which i quite like we don't get enough of those movies it's good zero yeah we need we need more movies where a guy isn't forced into becoming a fucking action hero. Which, by the way, is the movie we're doing next for fucking bonuses. A guy gets forced into becoming an action hero. I just like it when a schmuck becomes in the crosshairs and is like, Holy shit!

And spends the entire movie going, Holy shit! At some point, we're going to have to do, actually, North by Northwest. That would be quite fun and misogyny misogyny wife where's wife that's what women are for wife mad at me for hanging out with women

I cheated on her with I believe this it's still kind of portrayed as if that's unfair on Will Smith, which it isn't. Women like to be doing liberal hysteria. They do. So I think, you know, I could go like I think I'd go to a four for this.

I was going to say five. Yeah, do five. Certainly. I listen to women. Yeah. Okay. That gives us a total score of ten, which is into the double digits but still pretty good to actually watch it's an okay movie

there's not a lot of meat on it it's a little over long but it's a good movie they stress the chase scenes a bit too much the cinematography especially isn't really able to carry that weight like I say the shakiest of cams. But that is Enemy of the State.

How far we've fallen from a time when you could go in a movie, the government is spying on you, and people would be like, oh, shit, what? God, that's depressing, eh? The government's spying on you, I know. Yeah, but these days, it might be... Now of but these days now of days it might be a bit less misogynist because now of days

John Voight's character could be a woman and maybe someday in the distant future we could get a John Voight they them but in the meantime this has been Kill James Bond and we'll be returning with the next bonus episode The next bonus episode.

The next bonus episode is going to be Three Days of the Condor with Nate Bethea. We're going to get our boy on. That's right. Editor of the show. Sometime host of the show, Nate Bethea. It's going to be great. So subscribe to the Patreon if you haven't

already and thank you for listening. We will speak to you then. Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. We had a little chat after recording and we've decided it's time to give this show a little bit of structure again. So we're going to be ripping through another film series. So you can predict what we'll be watching and follow along at home if you'd like. We will be starting in two weeks time on the free feed. Dipping back into the Jack Ryan movies.

We did hunt for the Red October as a bonus last season. So we're going to be going with Patriot Games starring Harrison Ford next time. But if that is simply too long for you to wait, you can head on over to our Patreon patreon.com slash killjamesbond where we

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