Review: The Enemy Within

Forest Whitaker plays a long-serving Army Colonel working under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and especially the hawkish General Lloyd (Jason Robards). When Whitaker’s by-the-book Col. Casey catches wind of a conspiracy by Gen. Lloyd and snaky Defence Secretary Potter (Josef Sommer) to secretly mobilise troops for a coup, right under the nose of liberal U.S. President Foster (Sam Waterston), whose approval numbers are on the wane. He’s too soft on military/defence matters, they reason, and refuses to sign off on a bill to increase military spending. Now it’s up to Col. Casey and his old friend White House Chief of Staff Betsy Corcoran (Dana Delany) to get to the President and put a stop to the treacherous, treasonous plans. Dakin Mathews is the duplicitous VP, George Dzundza plays a Russian, Lawrence Pressman scores briefly as the Attorney-General.

Don’t let the impressive line-up of names and faces fool you, this 1994 TV movie from director Jonathan Darby (whose one and only theatrical gig was as writer-director of the Jessica Lange-Gwyneth Paltrow psycho snoozer “Hush” in 1998) is basically a remake of the 1964 political thriller “Seven Days in May” on fast-forward…with great chunks cut out. The original film went for just shy of two hours and had A+ stars across the board. This cheapo version runs under 90 minutes and features a bunch of B+ character actors from film and TV, and a couple of A- character actors (Jason Robards, Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker). The end result is pretty much a waste of time to anyone who has seen the earlier, better (if slightly overrated) version, and not really worth anyone else’s time either. Sure, the cast in the 1964 film was better than the pulpy material, but the filmmakers here do themselves and their cast, and the audience, a massive disservice. With the truncated timeframe, and the added annoyance of Whitaker’s father-son problems (not evident in the earlier film) there’s just not enough time to flesh either the plot or the characters out, leaving some rock-solid talent to try and keep you awake (George Dzundza’s unconvincing Russian accent striking the only sour note among the cast). Their efforts are appreciated, but not helpful enough.

As one would expect, two of the chief standouts here are the reliable Jason Robards and immediately empathetic Forest Whitaker, in the roles previously played by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas (Happy 103^rd, Kirk!), respectively. Whitaker has as little trouble getting the audience on his side as Robards arouses suspicion. I really don’t know why the film cut so much material out only to insert some irrelevant, half-arsed family drama for Whitaker. He does enough to draw you in already, and the screen time could’ve been better afforded to more relevant plot and supporting character time. The family stuff is still underdone and uninteresting. I’m not really a Sam Waterston fan, but playing a folksy American president is absolutely in his wheelhouse. Even better are veteran character actors Josef Sommer (some of his best-ever work) and Dakin Mathews. It’s a shame Sommer isn’t in the film all that much, because he’s pure slippery political duplicity. As for Mathews, I still think his best performance to date was the cameo as Santa on “The Big Bang Theory” (one of the funniest moments ever on that show), but he plays a fine soulless malleable prop for the bad guys here. Poor Dana Delany must’ve hated working on this, she gets absolutely nothing to work with here while the guys do all the talking for the most part. Utterly wasted and neither for the first or last time in her career. On the plus side we get an excellent rum-a-dum military music score by Joe Delia (“Driller Killer”, “Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power”) that suggests a higher-calibre film than it actually is.

A critically acclaimed thriller is remade into a flimsy TV movie that plays like John Grisham-lite. Whitaker, Robards, and Sommer try their best but there’s just not enough substance here for even a mild diversion let alone anything better. Disappointing, stick to the original or just watch re-runs of “24”. The teleplay Darryl Ponicsan (“Taps”, “School Ties”, “Random Hearts”) and Ron Bass (“Rain Man”, “Sleeping With the Enemy”, “Stepmom”) is based on the novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel and the 1964 Rod Serling script.

Finally, a question for someone – anyone – out there: Where in the hell did Mr. Darby go? His last IMDb credit is a short film from 2004. Where you at, dude?

Rating: C