Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

You know what I hate? When I’m spending a quality evening with my amazingly well proportioned hooker and she turns out to be an assassin. I totally hate that. You know what I hate even more? I hate it that the people who would hire this hooker assassin, instead of hiring a real assassin and dressing her up like a hooker, instead just a give a random hooker a gun and tell her to kill me. That’s a serious lack of respect right there. I hate that. This is one of the many little gems in director Dan Garcia’s cautionary tale ‘Enemies Among Us’ which is cautionary about… well… everything.

Note that this movie features an impressive cast of actors, actors we personally love, but are somewhat infamous in showing… how do you say… little indiscretion when accepting roles? Headlining our cast we have Billy Zane. Now I’m not exactly sure what this movie is ultimately about, but I have a rough idea. Billy Zane is one of those Washington D.C. type cats who makes backroom deals. I believe he’s made a deal with a terrorist type dude or something who subsequently gets seduced by a prostitute type hottie then popped. If there’s a theme in this movie it’s ‘don’t trust hookers’ and this is Cautionary Tale Number One. Say goodbye to Billy because he’s pretty much done for the day.

Then there’s Steven Bauer. He’s running for president and he is being grilled by a reporter, who obviously works for MSNBC, on his right wing energy plans or something. I can’t remember. This guy agrees to this interview on good faith but she’s seriously getting in his ass. I mean, you know, she won’t even let him answer the questions she asks thus making her the worst reporter ever. Cautionary Tale Two: Don’t Trust the Liberal Press.

The reason we’re talking to this presidential candidate leads us to what this movie is really about and that’s meeting Louisiana governor and potential vice-president candidate Chip Majors (James DuMont) who has just announced the biggest off-shore drilling expansion of ALL-TIME. Cautionary Tale Three: Offshore drilling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This also introduces us to Governor Majors’ security detail officers

Taylor (Griffin Hood) and Cobbs (Eric Freaking Roberts). We briefly meet Officer Taylor’s sister who tragically has breast cancer and no insurance. Cautionary Tale Four: We need some health care up in here because Breast Cancer without insurance sucks. Governor Majors has a major fund raiser to attend, accompanied by his security detail, but before he enters his room of boosters he feels the need to fool around with this prostitute we mentioned earlier. Governor Majors disarms this woman and chokes her to death. Wouldn’t have happened with a real assassin. Cautionary Tale Five: Random Hookers make Terrible Assassins.

Cobbs and Taylor bust in and see the dead whore. The Guv tries to bribe their silence with a cool mil. Cobbs is down, Taylor is reticent… but his sister does have breast cancer and no insurance. Count Taylor in. Taylor tries to hide this fact from Security Detail Officer Three, Officer Jones (Jacqueline Fleming), who feels Taylor should confide in him since they spent a night of passion together. She seems pretty obsessed about this night passion, Taylor… not so much. Cautionary Tale Six: Sex and Co-Workers do not mix. Cobbs, for his part, needs some critical info about something, we forget what, so he calls his ex-wife Judy (Robin Givens) who happens to be in Afghanistan torturing the dude was saw earlier get popped by that previous, more efficient prostitute. The tortured dude isn’t giving up any info. Cautionary Tale Seven: Torture rarely works. Just give the man cigarette instead and all will be known.

Turns out this someone trying to kill the Guv are the North Koreans because he has knowledge of the North Korean acquisition of enriched uranium. Cautionary Tale 8: Don’t piss of the North Koreans. Cautionary Tale 9: North Koreans and Enriched Uranium go together just a little worst than Sex with Co-Workers.

By this time everything is completely out of control. There are car chases, helicopter chases, shootouts and explosions while Taylor and the officer he spent the night of passion with, a night he seems to barely remember despite the fact the woman is pretty hot, try to save the Guv and themselves. Cautionary Tale 10: Prostitute choking, North Korean Dealing, Off Shore Oil well sanctioning assholes aren’t really worth saving. Just don’t do it.

The first thing ‘Enemies Among Us’ really needed was less stuff. It was seventy five or so minutes long and packs as much stuff into this brief running time as any seventy five minute movie ever made and as such almost nothing made any sense. While we love Billy Zane, Steven Bauer, Robin Givens and of course Eric Roberts, but E-Rob was the only one of the four actually in this movie with the other three being off at some remote location phoning in performances and if their scenes were cut out of this movie, they wouldn’t have been missed. Yes, we recognize that movie probably wouldn’t have gotten made without these cats in this movie, but if they had gotten dropped, the North Koreans had gotten dropped and all of the nonsense surrounding everything else in this flick had gotten dropped leaving us with a simple movie that was just about a crooked politician killing a whore and bribing a conflicted honest cop who really needs the money, I’m betting it would’ve been a much better movie. I’m betting.