The late Tony Scott was an expert at taking rote thriller premises and pushing them to aesthetic extremes, and this Will Smith-led romp synthesises a dozen classics of the manhunt genre on the cusp of the new millennium. Smith is a hotshot attorney in a battle between the cutting edge surveillance state, led by Jon Voight as a ruthless NSA chief, and the old-school spy tricks of a paranoid recluse, played by Gene Hackman (a more than subtle nod to his performance in The Conversation (1974)?).

This blockbuster feels like a software upgrade to the wiretapping dramas of the 1970s, with Smith playing a cornered but fleet-footed everyman who learns how much of his environment can be weaponised by the state to isolate and discredit its citizens. When it came to technology furthering national interests in a pre-Patriot Act America, the writing may have been on the wall.

We are also screening the Conversation one week before Enemy of the state on 29th May, find out more here - https://www.starandshadow.org.uk/programme/event/the-conversation,8043/