You know what the most frightening thing about rewatching this is? The fact that you just know that all the things that might have been film fantasy back in the late 90s are definitely possible today, and the world even knows that the NSA did it. Gene Hackman is like a Snowden type of character who was complicit but felt compelled to get out at least even if he did not speak out about what the people he worked for were up to, precisely because of the potential repercussions of that.

Movie magic also introduces a meta angle into Hackman's casting, when an archive photo of his character is taken directly from the big wiretap film of the 70s The Conversation with Hackman in the lead, almost as if he's continuing that character in the face of a new age of surveillance.

I just love how Tony Scott found exciting and action-oriented ways to tell any kind story he was brought on to tell or wanted to tell and his filmography is littered with one fine example after the other and I truly believe the man didn't make one bad film in his entire career.