Gene Hackman is said to have more or less reprised his role of Harry Caul, the paranoid "surveillance technician" from
The Conversation
for 1998’s
Enemy of the State
. The Will Smith-starring, Tony Scott-directing effort is a paranoid action thriller with a star-studded cast and a pulse of about 220. It starts with Smith’s Robert Clayton Dean, a hotshot attorney, being the unwitting recipient of some incriminating data that the government (or rather, a few rogue secret ops types) is just dying to get it’s hands on. In a very
The Net
-like fashion, Dean loses pieces of his life – home is tapped, credit bad, you name it.
He is eventually directed to a mutual friend name Brill, played by Hackman. Brill, a surveillance expert and former spy for the government currently in hiding, makes
The X-Files
‘ Mulder seem relaxed and completely trusting of the government by comparison. Everything freaks him out, and he’s not only a gruff s.o.b., he’s a bit of a badass.
He also couldn’t be much more different from Harry Caul – if they were to meet on the street, I would expect Elaine, Feldman and Gene to be nearby. Likewise, the Francis Ford Coppola-directed
Conversation
is just about the polar opposite of Scott’s
State
, registering a pulse somewhere around "comatose." Sure, Harry too is a paranoid surveillance expert played by Hackman – but that’s where the comparisons stop. Caul is a quiet, sensitive, devout Catholic, wracked by guilt over past jobs gone wrong, and he’s hesitant to make a connection with just about any outside his direct social circle. Even then he’s still touchy, and is so secretive that even his employee feels forced to a competitor due to Harry’s tight lips and closed-off personality.
Caul’s latest gig, not surprisingly, is giving him fits as well. We catch up with him as he and his crew are listening in on a conversation in a San Francisco city square between a man and a woman we never really meet. Over the course of the film, we learn bits and pieces of the discussion as we see Harry tweaking the recordings to an audible level, slowly unravelling a mystery that Harry, despite his better judgement and past, gets caught up in, to the point where he becomes the subject of some spy work himself.
I liked the story told in
The Conversation
, but it requires a patient, alert viewer (and possibly some of the stereo equipment that Caul uses to keep up with the dialogue). The inside look into Caul’s profession and methods are interesting, and I’m all for setting a tempo and character development, but the film is badly in need of an editor. It’s mood reminded me somewhat of the quieter, jazzy scenes from
In the Line of Fire
, but it never ratchets up the tension or the action quite like the Eastwood film does. It’s a very slow boil that does pay off in the end somewhat, but feels much more than its 113 minutes.