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In the two recent films that gave him an international name, Canadian director Denis Villeneuve brought an acutely concentrated vision to bear on stories of violent conflict beyond his native land. The Oscar-nominated " Incendies " concerned the horrors of war in a nameless but vividly evoked Middle Eastern country, while last year's " Prisoners " was a lacerating tale of kidnapping, terror and torture in a no less carefully described Pennsylvania town.

"Enemy," Villeneuve's latest (it was filmed between the two above-mentioned films, though it is being released after the latter), differs from the earlier works not only in being set in Canada, but also in offering a story that's ostensibly less concerned with painful real-life struggles than with dream-like subjective perplexities. Adapted by screenwriter Javier Gullon from Portuguese author Jose Saramago's novel " The Double ," the brooding, crepuscular drama features Jake Gyllenhaal (who also starred in "Prisoners") in the roles of a man and his double.

Since stories of doubles, with their long pedigree in literature and cinema, inherently belong to the realm of the fantastical, "Enemy" obviously stands apart from the traumatic real-world political and criminal traumas of its two predecessors. Less ambitious (and, at 90 minutes, far shorter) than those films, it's inevitably less impressive, more like a semi-whimsical short story by a master whose real forte is challenging realistic novels of epic scope.

Yet that's not to suggest the three films are entirely different. Also tinged with the quality of nightmares, the violence in "Incendies" and "Prisoners" was, or had the feeling of being, fratricidal or internecine. In "Enemy" there's also a sense of the antagonists being closely related, whether as long separated twins, as two aspects of the same personality, or as guys who fall into a violent competition due to the accidental "kinship" of their identical looks. Which of these possibilities, if any, comprises the "real" explanation is a question the film keeps thrusting back to the viewer.

The movie's look has the color of nicotine stains, or a smoggy freeway at dusk. Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal) has brown hair, a brown beard and inveterately wears rumpled brown or tan clothes. He lives in a vast brown city called Toronto and teaches history in an institutionally light-brownish classroom that's only half-full of students. In one of the few lecture snippets we hear from him, he tells his class that the rulers of Rome gave its citizens bread and circuses for purposes of distraction. With the blank affect of a man who's bored with every aspect of his life, Adam himself seems in need of distraction. Which is perhaps why, one day in the faculty room, he takes another teacher's advice to seek out a certain movie on DVD, one that promises to lift his spirits.

Watching the film later, Adam notices something strange in the background of one scene: an actor playing a bellhop has his own face. Startled, he does some research and discovers that the actor, Anthony Claire, has only three films to his credit. After finding out where the man lives, Adam begins calling his home, and initially gets only hostile, suspicious reactions from Anthony and his pregnant wife, Helen ( Sarah Gadon ).

Before they ever meet, we see that Adam and Anthony are leading roughly parallel lives. Neither seems professionally fulfilled. They are underachievers facing the approach of middle age with a glum dissatisfaction that perhaps masks an underlying anger, a desire to lash at the world—or someone else. Both men are also involved with blonde women who resemble each other both physically and in their difficulties with their partners. While the angry sex and icy silences shared by Adam and his girlfriend Mary ( Melanie Laurent ) signal a relationship about to implode, Helen evidently agonizes over bearing the child of a man she suspects of infidelity.

Once the two men encounter each other and, via the magic of special effects, inhabit the same visual space, the movie's most salient virtue comes into focus: Gyllenhaal, a very talented actor in most circumstances, here does exceptional work playing two men who are almost—but not quite—identical. The differences are small, and more emotional than physical. Anthony is meaner and more imperious, Adam more resentful and recessive. Observing these subtle contrasts offers no end of fascinations, yet we're simultaneously aware of the inevitabilities implied by the characters' competitiveness and hostility: each will try to bed the other's woman, and only one will be left alive at the end.

As noted, Villeneuve and Gullon leave the meaning of all this an open question—or perhaps several questions at once. Is the French Canadian director's tale of Anglo Canada an allegory of his culturally divided homeland? Is the cryptic story a symbolic meditation on something central to cinema, the fraught relationship between an actor and the "double" he fashions in creating a character who bears his likeness? Does it contain a whiff of Villeneuve's feelings about Canada's greatest art-film auteur prior to his arrival, David Cronenberg , whose " Dead Ringers " is one of cinema's finest tales of doubles.

Take your pick, or better yet, supply your own reading. What seems certain is that Villeneuve is a very self-conscious artist whose estimable work descends from the European high-modernist tradition of decades past. Thus, in "Enemy," we don't find a clear debt to any particular doubles-themed work of literature or cinema, but rather echoes of the concerns and stylistic penchants of directors such as Bergman, Bunuel, Polanski, Kieslowki and Antonioni (especially in the contemplation of Toronto's sprawling architectural jumble). All of those filmmakers came from an indigenous national cinema, then went on to become transnational cosmopolitan artists. The same is now happening to Villeneuve. Perhaps questions of identity and "doubleness" go with making that kind of leap.

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

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Enemy (2014)

Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell/ Anthony St. Claire

Mélanie Laurent as Mary

Sarah Gadon as Helen

Isabella Rossellini as Adam's Mother

• Denis Villeneuve
• José Saramago
• Javier Gullón

Cinematography

• Nicolas Bolduc

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Common Sense Media Review

Mind-bending, surreal mystery with sex and language.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Enemy is a sexy, surreal mystery from the director/actor team that made Prisoners . It features lots of female nudity, including one full-frontal shot, plus some creepy sexual imagery and the suggestion of women performing sex acts for men to watch. There are also several sex…

Why Age 18+?

A scene takes place at a strange, mysterious club in which women perform on stag

Language is not heard very often, but in the film's final third, "f--k" is used

We see a realistic car crash, and a few nightmarishly scary images. Otherwise, t

Characters drink casually, at home, in a background way. A woman says, "I think

Any Positive Content?

The movie is so surreal and elusive that any messages are buried deep within. Pe

The movie more or less shows two sides of one person, one aggressive and confide

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A scene takes place at a strange, mysterious club in which women perform on stage. We hear the sounds and see some suggestions of one woman masturbating, while many men watch. The main character has sex with his girlfriend more than once; her breasts and bottom are shown. A pregnant woman is shown undressing, and her breasts are on view. Characters have sex with more than one partner. In a nightmare sequence, a fully naked woman with a spider head walks toward the camera (upside-down, on the ceiling). A character follows a strange woman down a hallway, with a close-up on her behind (she's wearing a kind of sexy, fishnet outfit).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language is not heard very often, but in the film's final third, "f--k" is used several times. "S--t" is also heard once or twice.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

We see a realistic car crash, and a few nightmarishly scary images. Otherwise, there are a few moments of characters yelling or arguing with one another.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink casually, at home, in a background way. A woman says, "I think I'm drunk" in one scene, and goes to bed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

The movie is so surreal and elusive that any messages are buried deep within. Perhaps: "curiosity killed the cat"? Other themes will be up for discussion.

Positive Role Models

The movie more or less shows two sides of one person, one aggressive and confident, and the other meek and sad. Neither is particularly admirable, though the movie could spark discussion about the different sides of our own personalities.

Parents need to know that Enemy is a sexy, surreal mystery from the director/actor team that made Prisoners . It features lots of female nudity, including one full-frontal shot, plus some creepy sexual imagery and the suggestion of women performing sex acts for men to watch. There are also several sex scenes between partners, and characters with more than one partner. Language is strong in the latter part of the movie, with several uses of "f--k," plus at least one use of "s--t." There's a realistic car crash, and characters shouting and arguing. Characters also drink in a casual, background way, at home. The movie is more about the mystery than the solution, and does not provide any real answers. It will be up to adventurous older teens and grown-ups to ponder the clues and reach their own conclusions. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (4)
• Kids say (10)

Based on 4 parent reviews

Dark, smart mystery

Great movie, what's the story.

Adam Bell ( Jake Gyllenhaal ) is a sad, drab history professor who gives the same lecture about dictatorships (and their repeating patterns), and goes home to the same evening routine with his girlfriend Mary ( Melanie Laurent ). One night he rents a movie and spots an actor that looks exactly like himself. He discovers the actor's name, Anthony Clair (Gyllenhaal again), and contacts him. The confident, commanding Anthony is married to the beautiful, pregnant Helen ( Sarah Gadon ). The two men appear to be exact doubles, and neither knows precisely what to make of it, until Anthony callously decides to steal Mary away for a weekend. Yet for Adam, the puzzle, involving a mysterious package and dreams about spiders, grows ever more complex.

Is It Any Good?

Oscar-nominated Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve continues his collaboration with actor Jake Gyllenhaal , following Prisoners ; the result here is much tighter but far less realistic. Indeed, ENEMY could easily be described as surreal. It's a mystery story, with mystery elements, but the movie does not provide much in the way of answers. It's more like a David Lynch film, with clues, emotions, images, ideas, and sensations coming together for one unique experience, with a bizarre, unforgettable ending.

Enemy begins with shots of a mysterious club involving women in sexual situations and spiders, and these nightmarish images continue to permeate the film. The movie also dabbles in notions of repeating patterns and doubled images, though not overtly. It's smart enough not to leave blatant clues or red herrings, anywhere. Based on a 2002 novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author Jose Saramago, it's a truly intriguing movie, sure to leave viewers pondering long after.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the sex in the movie. Does sex seem to be a healthy or loving outlet for these characters? What's the overall tone to the sexual activity in the movie?

Is the movie scary ? Creepy? How does a story that departs from reality affect you? What other movies have departed from reality, with different results?

The main character's personality traits seem to have been split, one confident and aggressive, and the other meek and sad. Do you feel all these things within yourself? At what different times, or in what situations?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 14, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : June 24, 2014
• Cast : Jake Gyllenhaal , Sarah Gadon , Melanie Laurent
• Director : Denis Villeneuve
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 90 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some strong sexual content, graphic nudity and language
• Last updated : June 19, 2024

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Enemy review – a thrilling take on the doppelganger theme

Richard Ayoade last year showed how to extract dark comedy from the doppelganger theme in his version of Dostoyevsky’s The Double; Canadian film-maker Denis Villeneuve’s emphasis is on neurosis and fear with this adaptation of José Saramago ’s 2002 novel O Homem Duplicado: The Duplicated Man. He brings a formidable atmosphere and control to this intriguing, disquieting film: the double theme is a notorious film-school cliche, and using the same actor in two roles can be a lazy shortcut to the uncanny. But Villeneuve’s film earns its anxiety. Jake Gyllenhaal gives the dual performance: a depressed history lecturer in Toronto who one night watches a movie and glimpses an actor who appears to be his exact duplicate. He seeks out this mirror image; their encounter gives rise to hostility, terror, a kind of mutually agreed nervous breakdown, but a thrilling sense of possibility, an escape from the prison house of individuality. There is something of David Cronenberg ’s Dead Ringers here – maybe even a touch of  Patricia Highsmith ’s Strangers on a Train. There are coolly effective moments when Villeneuve declines to make it clear which double we are watching and whose memories and fears we are experiencing. The final shot is bizarre. This could be Villeneuve’s most accomplished film so far.

• Jake Gyllenhaal
• Denis Villeneuve

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Enemy Review

Double trouble..

Jake Gyllenhaal shines as a teacher and his double in this engrossing and eerie thriller from director Denis Villeneuve. Now on Direct TV On Demand and in theaters March 21.

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Enemy Review

02 Jan 2015

"Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered,” runs a title card at the start of Enemy. Based on José Saramago’s Nobel prize-winning novella The Double, you might never get to the bottom of Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal’s second collaboration following Prisoners (it actually shot first), but figuring it out is a riveting, thoughtful, thoroughly disturbing experience. This is brilliant, daring filmmaking that calls to mind the heyday of David Lynch and, post-Incendies and Prisoners, confirms Villeneuve as one of cinema’s most compelling new voices.

In outline, Enemy sounds like an extended Twilight Zone episode but the premise — lecturer Adam (Gyllenhaal) becomes obsessed with his dead spit, actor Anthony (also Gyllenhaal) — is played for more than spooky sci-fi weirdness. Instead it’s a slow inward interrogation into a split psyche, detailing mental turmoil, unconscious desires, predatory sexuality (Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon play partners who get swapped) and the inability to feel intimacy with a dark, unflinching eye. It’s not all downbeat, though. The apartments are to die for.

If on paper the pair seem miles apart (Adam – Volvo and cords; Anthony — motorbikes and leathers), Gyllenhaal negotiates the differences in increments. These are two terrific performances, shifting between emotionally comatose and playful, that make you forget the special effects process but, more importantly, provide a grounding to anchor (but never explain) all the strangeness surrounding it. The Canadian milieu might call to mind early Cronenberg and you could lob any number of other touchstones at it (Kafka, Kubrick), but Enemy is its own thing. Villeneuve has incredible control of his palette, both visually (all cigarette-stain yellows and bruise browns) and aurally (LOUD scary music by Saunder Jurriaans and Danny Bensi), subtly building an undertow of fear and dread. On top, we get the more overtly bizarre — diversions into underground sex clubs, unsettling images of giant spiders. Some films are about characters dealing with uncomfortable headspaces. Enemy puts you inside one.

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Movie Review: Enemy (2013)

• Aaron Leggo
• Movie Reviews
• 4 responses
• --> March 31, 2014

Professor Gyllenhaal.

Denis Villeneuve knows the truth: Spiders are evil. And now he’s made an entire movie about this. It’s hard to say whether Villeneuve is a genuine arachnophobe or just not a fan of the definitive creepy-crawly creatures, but his deliciously bleak head-trip thriller Enemy is absolutely littered with them. The arachnids are up to no good here, though to be fair, they’re not the only ones with a sinister agenda in this deliriously dark picture.

Enter Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal, “ Prisoners “), a mild-mannered professor who shuffles through life in a sickly hued Toronto with an aimless malaise that follows him like a persistent personal cloud. He’s trapped in a dreary circle, unable to move forward. His apartment is depressingly empty, his mother (Isabella Rossellini, “Keyhole”) is worried about him, and his attractive girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent, “ Now You See Me “) can’t even drag him away from marking papers with an invitation to the bedroom. Adam isn’t just stuck in a rut; he is a rut.

But everything changes when he watches a movie (the result of asking for a “cheerful” recommendation, an ironic request in a Villeneuve pic) and soon discovers that a small role is played by none other than his very own doppelganger. The presence of this actor is so subtle that Adam doesn’t even notice it at first, only making the connection later in a dream. And then he can’t get it out of his head. So begins Adam’s journey to hunt down his double, setting off a series of devastating events that tear at his psyche.

When Adam finds the actor, whose real name is Anthony, Enemy develops a fork in the narrative path and we witness the dual storylines unfold from that point on. Anthony has a beautiful blonde partner, too, named Helen (Sarah Gadon, “ A Dangerous Method “), but she’s his wife and she’s pregnant, so it’s not like his relationship situation is a mere mirror of Adam’s. Physically, though, the two are nearly indistinguishable, since Gyllenhaal wears the same bearded look for both roles, only providing some visual division in their differing wardrobes.

In terms of personality, Anthony exudes a brusque confidence that Adam probably wishes he had. Neither guy seems to have any clue as to what’s happening or why, but it’s clear that this is a chilling situation for everyone involved, including us. The score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans causes a blanket of dread to cover almost every scene, so the screws of tension are turned tight at all times. That’s a difficult note of terror to maintain without it becoming monotonous, but Villeneuve embraces the challenge and keeps digging deeper under our skin by keeping the imagery fresh and the conflict cerebral.

So where do the spiders come into all of this? Well, just about everywhere. It’s the why that leaves us scratching our heads, but that’s the beauty of Enemy , that its mysteries are multi-faceted, that they live and breathe in the dark corners of the narrative, open to all sorts of fascinating interpretations. One of the first shots shows a woman’s shoe about to crush a tarantula, so perhaps what follows is actually a spider revenge tale. Whether or not that’s the particular interpretation one wishes to explore, it’s clear that the creatures manifest themselves as monsters here, invading Adam’s mind and closing in on his sanity.

Adam’s dreams are haunted by the arachnids, revealing such striking images as a gigantic spider towering over skyscrapers while it slinks through the city and a naked woman with a spider head walking upside down through a hallway. These shots offer the motif at its most blatant, but they make such an immediate impression because they’re instantly iconic and they hurl us into Adam’s experience, creating a visualization of the movie’s terrifying tone.

Trying to understand.

A more subtle employment of the spider motif starts to creep into the picture as the story progresses and the situation worsens, as if the arachnids have sunk deeper not only into Adam’s consciousness, but the movie’s as well. At one point, the camera glides across the ceiling, looking down at Adam from a menacingly unusual angle. At another, the splintered glass of a car window suggests a spider web in its cracked formation.

The robust ubiquity of the whole narrative pattern makes for an absolutely hypnotic experience, but what is most impressive is how Villeneuve and screenwriter Javier Gullón, adapting a novel by José Saramago, leave it all up to us to determine how much is real and how much is imagined. The degree to which the imagery could be interpreted as metaphorical is up for debate, meaning there’s as much room for a fantastical theory as there is for something more grounded, such as the possibility that this is all part of an elaborate plan to cover up an extramarital affair.

By providing such depth and dimension for both Gyllenhaal-performed characters, Villeneuve ensures that Enemy is more than an unnerving head-scratcher, but additionally a taut, engaging examination of lives unraveled and reformed. There’s dramatic weight to the intertwined existences of Adam and Anthony, because the emotional dangers have been boiled down to an inescapably cramped and personal space that threatens to consume the characters and the entire movie with them. Mysteries abound, but one thing is for certain: You can’t trust the spiders. As Enemy so elegantly and eerily declares, they don’t trust us, either.

Tagged: actor , college , novel adaptation , teacher

You and I both know the truth. You just don't admit it.

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'Movie Review: Enemy (2013)' have 4 comments

March 31, 2014 @ 10:06 am Andrew

I have honestly no idea what watched. So many questions, so few answers.

Log in to Reply

March 31, 2014 @ 1:08 pm Me Frank

Gyllenhaal reminds me a lot of Matthew McConaughey in that they are both better actors than their earlier work let on. If Jake continues taking roles like the one in Prisoner and this his Oscar should soon follow.

April 1, 2014 @ 12:41 am Sunnie

Sounds interesting.

June 27, 2014 @ 9:16 am jjames36

Great review of what is certainly an interesting movie. The spiders are rather consistently present, aren’t they? :)

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Enemy Review

Jake Gyllenhaal plays two conflicted and conflicting men in Enemy, director Denis Villeneuve’s atmospheric and enigmatic new feature.

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Shortly before shooting his excellent major studio debut, Prisoners , director Denis Villeneuve made Enemy , a strange and inscrutable psychological thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal (who also worked with the director in Prisoners ) in a dual role as two men who look exactly alike and are drawn into a dangerous psychological battle with each other. The film’s refusal to deliver a conventional narrative may frustrate some viewers, but should also be embraced by moviegoers who like stories that take place just a step or two removed from reality.

Based on the novel The Double  by the late, brilliant Brazilian writer Jose Saramago, Enemy opens with a strange scene that sets the tone for the rest of this unsettling piece. Inside an underground sex club is where we first encounter a bearded Gyllenhaal watching a live exhibition along with several other men. A silver platter is brought out and its lid lifted to reveal a swollen, grotesque tarantula underneath – which is immediately crushed by a woman’s spiked heel.

We then switch to Gyllenhall as history professor Adam Bell, whose detachment and disinterest in his own life is matched only by his remote relationship with his girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent). Even sex is yet another mechanical function in Bell’s dreary, disconnected daily routine. But one day, while watching a movie on a recommendation from a colleague, Bell spies an actor in the background of one scene who disconcertingly looks like him. Doing some research, Bell eventually learns Anthony St. Clair’s phone number and calls him – only to be mistaken for Anthony himself by the actor’s pregnant girlfriend Helen (Sarah Gadon).

When the two men finally meet, it is clear that they don’t just resemble each other but are completely identical – right down to matching scars. This has a shattering effect on both their psyches and soon leads to a struggle in which both men wish to prevail – although the upper hand at first seems to go to the much more arrogant and cocksure Anthony (who, we assume, was also the man in the sex club) than the neurotic and at first timid Adam, who is plagued with increasingly horrific nightmares. As the conflict escalates, the women in their lives are inevitably drawn into it as well, with potentially tragic consequences.

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That description of the plot makes it seem a lot more straightforward than it actually is, because Enemy functions primarily as a mood piece, with the story drifting forward in a series of surreal, tense set pieces rather than a fast-moving chain of events. Villeneuve, as he did in Incendies and Prisoners , excels at sustaining the mood he wishes to convey; with its bleak, gray view of a tomb-like Toronto, the dark, stifling interiors of both men’s apartments, and the score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans doing a lot of heavy lifting, a miasma of dread settles over the film from the beginning and never lets up, almost to the point of self-parody.

But the movie never quite crosses that line, thanks especially to the committed performance(s) from Gyllenhall as Adam and Anthony. The two look the same but are different in subtle ways, leaving the viewer to wonder whether Anthony does actually exist or is some unattainable different version of himself that the disheveled, despondent Adam has dreamed up. The idea that we are looking at two versions of the same man gains strength when the inevitable happens and one of them seduces the other’s woman without her realizing the switch.

Gyllenhaal is excellent in the dual role, and gets solid supporting work from Laurent and Gadon, the latter a recent favorite of David Cronenberg. And she’s not the only Cronenberg connection in the film; Villeneuve’s thematic concerns, somnolent tone and eerie imagery call to mind a lot of the great Canadian director’s early work, along with the cold depiction of Toronto. And then there’s that ending: Villeneuve’s very last shot is horrifying, pretentious and just plain nuts all at the same time, jamming Cronenberg, David Lynch and Kafka into a startling unexpected final image that also brings the film full circle.

Is Enemy easily explained? Not a chance. Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal (and screenwriter Javier Gullon) are not interested in logical arguments or conclusive statements: if you think True Detective was a tough sit, then stay far away from this. But there’s no question that they’ve fashioned an unsettling philosophical/existential horror film that grapples with core questions about identity, fidelity and what it means to be a man – then casts you adrift to find the answers for yourself.

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3.5 out of 5

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

‘Enemy’ (2014) Movie Review

By Brad Brevet

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

A giant spider slowly walks across a bleak Toronto skyline. A history teacher sees a man that looks just like him in a random movie. A pregnant woman thinks her husband may be cheating on her. A mother is just happy her son is no longer satisfied being a third-rate actor. These are a few of the facts that make up Denis Villeneuve ‘s Lynchian new film Enemy , a film I’m still processing and perhaps forever will.

Based on “The Double” by Nobel Laureate José Saramago , Enemy drowns the mood in darkness as the film opens with a man walking down a long, dark corridor. We’ll later recognize him as D-level actor Anthony Clair ( Jake Gyllenhaal ), but here he is just one of many men, gazing wide-eyed as women dance naked for their pleasure. The dance ends and two more women make an appearance, carrying a sterling silver tray, placing it on the floor and lifting the lid. A tarantula is revealed and it slowly crawls off the tray as one of the women moves to squash the arachnid under her heel. Cut to black…

A university professor, Adam Bell (also Gyllenhaal ), is lecturing on chaos and dictators, their want for control and the repetitious nature of history itself. He goes home where he finds his girlfriend, Mary ( Mélanie Laurent ), waiting for him. They fuck * . He sleeps. He wakes. She’s gone. He lectures on dictators. Rinse and repeat until one day at lunch a co-worker recommends a movie, something “cheerful”. He goes home, sends Mary to bed alone and stays up to watch. The movie ends. He goes to bed. Forces himself on Mary who pushes him off. She leaves. He sleeps and wakes with a start.

A scene from the movie he’d just seen replayed in his dreams features the man he’ll soon come to know as Anthony Clair, his exact look-a-like, and he can’t get it out of his head. He must contact him. He does and the actor’s wife ( Sarah Gadon ) answers. Recognizing his voice, she mistakes him for her husband, but as a result of Adam’s stumbling she soon believes he’s a jealous husband/boyfriend, calling to contact the man whose been sleeping with his wife/girlfriend. What is going on?

The tangled web gets increasingly complex as one scene bleeds into another and the text that opens the film (and this review) continues to come to mind. The film itself is chaos and, seemingly, without order. Once the film ends it’s as if Villeneuve has given you a puzzle and you must move the scenes around to decipher the narrative. Clues are peppered throughout, but even they are ambiguous to a point there actually might not be one true answer as much as there may be several.

What’s clear, and in no way a spoiler, is that Adam and Anthony aren’t doppelgängers, they’re the same person. Which one is real and which one is a figment of this man’s fractured psyche is unclear, and in fact it’s likely neither wholly represent the conscience they share. Thus is the beauty of Enemy .

Along with the films of David Lynch , Fight Club will be a continuous go-to when trying to find a narrative comparison, but even David Fincher ‘s film is far more straight-forward than what you’re getting into here. Enemy is pure menace and manipulation, a look at the objectification of women, an examination of the male ego and the want for control, all accompanied by a steady, rumbling score from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans and the dark and dreary cinematography of Nicolas Bolduc , painting a grey and amber aura over the city of Toronto and the life of this troubled man.

Enemy is a film you won’t want to watch on your own. You’ll want to absorb as much as you can and take what you’ve learned and order the chaos with others. When it came down to trying to figure out if I liked it or not I had to ask myself if I liked films such as Mulholland Dr. or Blue Velvet the first time I saw them. The answer is clear, if a director can manage to manipulate our interpretation of a film while also engaging us with a confounding piece of cinema he/she most certainly has created something I’ve enjoyed.

* I apologize for the vulgarity, but to merely suggest they have “sex” would be to downplay the act and its effect on the film. It’s not an act of love as much as it’s a show of power.

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Metacritic reviews

• 100 The Playlist Rodrigo Perez The Playlist Rodrigo Perez Enemy is a transfixing grand slam that certifies Villeneuve as the real deal and one of the most exciting new voices in cinema today.
• 90 Village Voice Michael Nordine Village Voice Michael Nordine Denis Villeneuve's shared dream of a film takes the simple premise of a man glimpsing his doppelganger while watching a movie and mines every bit of tension and oddity from it — there's hardly a scene that doesn't exude menace.
• 82 Film.com David Ehrlich Film.com David Ehrlich Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy might have the scariest ending of any film ever made.
• 70 Variety Peter Debruge Variety Peter Debruge Ultimately, the enigmatic surface conflict — in which a man must contend with his own carbon copy as rival — proves to be the film’s own worst enemy, for its dark, David Lynchian allure proves almost too compelling, obscuring the material’s deeper themes.
• 70 The Dissolve Jordan Hoffman The Dissolve Jordan Hoffman For a tone poem on loneliness, fluid identity, and photogenic apartments, Enemy is the best entry in the genre since Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. And the last five minutes are just as unpredictable.
• 63 Slant Magazine Jesse Cataldo Slant Magazine Jesse Cataldo Jake Gyllenhaal embodies the two roles with real presence, establishing Adam's sniveling wimp and Anthony's striding jerk as two believably discrete sides of the same coin.
• 60 The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young More than a thriller, this adaptation of Jose Saramago’s novel The Double is an absurdist-existential mood piece – and a very dark mood it is.
• 60 Time Out Joshua Rothkopf Time Out Joshua Rothkopf All the way back to "Donnie Darko," Jake Gyllenhaal has had an inchoate sense of evolution about him, a tricky quality that better actors can’t pull off half as well. So it’s hard to say if splitting the star into two doppelgängers — Adam, a mousy college professor, and Anthony, a rising actor with a healthy ego — is the best dramatic plan.
• 60 New York Daily News Joe Neumaier New York Daily News Joe Neumaier It never comes to much more than an atmospheric head-scratcher.
• 25 New York Post Lou Lumenick New York Post Lou Lumenick It doesn’t add up to much of anything exciting, even with an appearance by Isabella Rossellini (of Lynch’s “Blue Velvet’’) as the mother of one of the doubles.
• See all 30 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Enemy

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Film of the week: Enemy

Two Jakes: Gyllenhaal goes Janus-faced in Denis Villeneuve’s spidery adaptation of José Saramago’s The Double, says Jason Anderson.

Jason Anderson 2 January 2015

from our  January 2015 issue

Enemy (2013)

Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.” Spoken in a conversation that is otherwise not included in Denis Villeneuve’s deeply beguiling adaptation of José Saramago’s novel The Double , the line used as Enemy ’s epigraph summarises the challenge the film poses to its audience.

Canada/Spain/France 2013 Certificate 15  90m 27s

Director Denis Villeneuve

Cast Adam/Anthony Clair Jake Gyllenhaal Mary Mélanie Laurent Helen Sarah Gadon mother Isabella Rossellini

Full credits

Dolby Digital In Colour [2.35:1]

UK release date 2 January 2015 in cinemas and on VoD Distributor Curzon Film World ► Trailer

That’s true whether the viewers in question already delight in deciphering puzzle films such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) or Inception (2010) or come to Enemy hoping for a more clearly signposted mystery thriller along the lines of Prisoners (2013), the Canadian director’s other recent teaming with star Jake Gyllenhaal . In either case, they may react to Enemy’s aggressive disdain for storytelling conventions and cheeky refusal to cede its secrets with the same air of befuddlement that greeted the film’s premiere in Toronto in September 2013, when several moments of stunned silence followed the final spidery surprise.

First published in the original Portuguese in 2002, Saramago’s novel is similarly unforthcoming about the cosmic machinations that have resulted in two entirely identical men sharing the same pocket of the space-time continuum. Instead of pondering the reasons for this aberration or its potential impact on our commonly held but perhaps equally absurd delusions about our uniqueness as individuals, the novel’s unidentified narrator busies himself with an account of the tightly wound protagonist’s efforts to discover the identity and whereabouts of his double while concealing his own role in this unprecedented predicament. (The reasons behind the plague in Saramago’s Blindness – whose 2008 film adaptation was co-produced by some of the team behind Enemy – were similarly obscure.) The protagonist’s floundering results in a comedy of errors (and manners) whose seemingly light-hearted tone belies the existential horror at the story’s core, as well as the cruelly tragic nature of its finale, which leaves him essentially imprisoned in his double’s existence.

In their adaptation, Villeneuve and Spanish screenwriter Javier Gullón retain much of Saramago’s dry humour while amplifying the dread with elements of their own invention. As a result, the matter of Enemy’s own identity becomes nearly as slippery as that of its two identical protagonists. After an alluring intro set in a sex club that seems rather less classy than the iconic example in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), the film settles into a more wryly satirical mode, with teacher Adam’s classroom talk of Marx and history’s repetitions juxtaposed with glimpses of his personal hamster wheel of glum streetcar commutes and joyless couplings with girlfriend Mary. When he comes across the existence of his double, actor Anthony, his actions push the proceedings into the shape of a mystery story, albeit one with a rather hapless sleuth who is soon hopelessly trapped inside “the plot of a detective novel with no known criminal”, as Saramago’s narrator puts it.

Like the source material, Villeneuve’s film contains more than a few traces of sex farce, too. After all, our store of ribald tales would surely be drastically reduced if not for the abundance of incidents involving mistaken, concealed or switched identities. Anthony – whose history of philandering is suggested in a fraught exchange with his wife Helen – certainly recognises the potential advantages of his situation. Following Mary on to a streetcar, he sizes her up with the air of a predator who is absolutely certain of his hunting prowess. He understands that he already possesses the most perfect of all disguises. (In one of the film’s smarter reversals, it is Helen who proves to be the bolder lover, when she plays along with Adam’s far from persuasive impersonation of her husband.)

Enemy displays a similarly playful attitude towards its place in a lineage of films with twin or otherwise identical characters, a tradition that seems especially rich in Toronto (where this film is set) thanks to Jeremy Irons’s double act in David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988) and Tatiana Maslany’s astounding performance as a multiplicity of clones in the BBC America hit Orphan Black (2013-).

It was thanks to another piece of synchronicity that Enemy arrived on the festival circuit at the same time as Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Double , with Jesse Eisenberg facing off against himself. But compared with the performers in these examples, Gyllenhaal has relatively few encounters with himself, and Villeneuve is largely uninterested in wowing viewers with the sight of two Jakes sharing the frame. In fact, he goes so far as to skip the opportunity for a fight scene – Saramago’s actor is far rougher than the timid teacher, immobilising him with an armlock during their confrontation over his nefarious plans.

And whereas Eisenberg’s pair of rivals in The Double are locked in the ego-versus-id dynamic typical of twin tales, the personalities of Adam and Anthony do not boast so many easily discernible differences. Hesitant and nervous in his manner, Adam may display little of the actorly swagger we see in Anthony, but the two men share a certain aloofness and a cool determination to see their decisions through, even when their later ones prompt a growing degree of identity confusion. This is most startling when Adam visits his mother, played with a marvellous hauteur by Isabella Rossellini. When she makes a disdainful reference to his acting career, both Adam (if it is actually Adam) and the viewer rightly wonder who he’s supposed to be. There’s the possibility that she’s been Anthony’s mother all along.

Appropriating the self-dividing protagonists of Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2003) would hardly count as the only move that Enemy borrows from David Lynch ’s playbook. His influence is just as palpable in the oddly languorous pacing of many scenes and the hard, washed-out look of Toronto, whose curvy cylinders of glass and concrete reaching up into smoggy skies of yellow could almost pass for Lynch’s Los Angeles.

The Silencio-like club and the arachnid motif are Villeneuve and Gullón’s most conspicuous additions to Saramago’s story. Whatever the spider’s symbolic significance may be (perhaps we’re meant to think of a Jorogumo , a creature that transforms into a human seductress in Japanese folklore), the motif prompts some of Enemy’s most striking images. The shiny face of a spider-woman glimpsed in one of Adam’s dreams is cleverly evoked by the sheen of the motorcycle helmet that Anthony wears to conceal himself while stalking Mary. Likewise, the web-like appearance of a cracked window in a car wreck forecasts Adam’s final surprise.

All this is highly indicative of a filmmaker who’s having a grand old time. That might come sometimes at the viewer’s expense, but it’s hard to begrudge Villeneuve his indulgences when they yield this much pleasure. The director seems consistently delighted at this opportunity to shift away from the high-minded seriousness of Prisoners and Incendies (2010) and demonstrate the same flair for the absurd he showed in Maelstrom (2000), a similarly audacious, arresting and confounding drama that may not have had any spiders but did have a dead fish for a narrator.

Playing a character who’s a far cry from his saucer-eyed sociopath in Tony Gilroy’s Nightcrawler (2014), Gyllenhaal faces the tricky task of conveying the subtle differences of two men whose identities are thrown into flux. The result is his most nuanced performance since playing another sleuth caught out of his depth in Zodiac (2007). Like David Fincher’s masterful descent into the irrational and the unknowable, Enemy offers no tidy solutions, only a very sticky web and a hungry creature that’s ready to swallow you whole.

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The Deeper Meaning Of Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, Explained

This post contains spoilers for "Enemy."

"It was Hegel that said that all the greatest world events happen twice, and then Karl Marx added: the first time it was a tragedy, the second time it was a farce," says history professor Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) during a lecture session when he's first introduced in "Enemy." While these words seem innocuous with respect to untangling the complex web of themes in Denis Villeneuve's 2014 film , they're actually the key to the central mystery that grips the dual protagonists. Viewing "Enemy" through a singular lens might not give us all the answers — or satisfactory ones, for that matter — so let us tackle some of the biggest questions that seem to confound viewers once the credits roll.

To offer a brief, yet superficial recap: Adam, who seems discontent with his life's numbing monotony, stumbles upon a film featuring someone who looks exactly like him . This actor, Anthony (also Gyllenhaal) , is less a lookalike and more a true double, with whom Adam becomes increasingly obsessed. The severity of this doppelgänger situation is intensified after the two meet and realize that their personalities could not be more different. While Adam engages with others politely and seems weighed down by the burden of existence, Anthony carries himself with an arrogant self-assurance that verges on impudence. Disturbing spider imagery weaves their disparate lives together with urgency, until one of the doubles dies in an accident, leaving the other with the rare opportunity of starting afresh. Unfortunately, this opportunity is a missed one, as history is bound to repeat itself.

While discussing the film's dense themes, Villeneuve told the  Hollywood Reporter  that "Enemy" is deliberately structured like a "spiral." Let's take a closer look at these dizzying narrative shapes.  

Adam and Anthony are two halves of a whole in Enemy

"Enemy" is loosely based on José Saramago's 2002 novel "The Double," which dives into the unutterable horror of becoming aware of a mirrored self that is identical yet distinctly different, leading to a crisis strong enough to uproot the laws of reality. Doubles rarely find a way to peacefully co-exist; the laws of self-preservation dictate that only one can remain, lest the chaos descends into something unfathomably Kafkaesque. "Enemy" sets up this tension by emphasizing the vast differences between Adam and Anthony. One is mired in existential malaise even before he meets his identical twin, and the other maintains his confident, caustic toxicity even after discovering the truth. Anthony's wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon) is distressed after learning about Adam, amidst tensions over Anthony's repeated infidelities even while she is pregnant. When Adam pretends to be his double and approaches Helen, she can see right through him and seems to prefer the gentler, kinder version of her husband.

However, "Enemy" is not about identical twins, but a schism in the subconscious, where two warring selves fail to remain in control of their innate impulses. Every visual and subtextual clue points to the fact that Adam and Anthony are the same person, fighting for dominance over a singular existence that gets divided into two. Let's keep the words of his mother (played by Isabella Rossellini) in mind: at first, she points out Adam's lack of control over his life, underlining his unkempt appearance and general dissatisfaction, but later, she alludes to the same dissatisfaction in a different light. She talks about him giving up on his dreams of becoming an actor, and how he's discontent despite having a respectable job as a history professor. But what does this mean? 

Enemy is about the deep fear of commitment

For a subconscious double to exist, it has to be born from the primary self. In this case, failed actor turned history professor Adam is the primary self, who is married to Helen and feels shackled by traditional monogamy and the mundane nature of his profession. As Helen makes clear at several points, Adam has been unfaithful, and this concentrated desire for freedom and lack of commitment compounds into a double: Anthony, the idealized version, the confident, successful actor who commits adultery at underground clubs without restraint or remorse. Although Adam's profession could be a fulfilling one, it is not his passion. After all, being an educator comes with responsibilities, moral restraint, and a sense of commitment to the cause. As he's not committed to this way of life, even such a respectable job leaves him feeling hollow, the thrills of a would-be-acting career haunting him forever.

Anthony is a culmination of the most egotistical suppressed desires that Adam harbors. It's his mind's attempt to distance itself from the subconscious. Adam is not introduced as a married individual, as he spends most of his time with his girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent), but their relationship is defined only by sexual intimacy. Adam does not cheat on Mary or covet other women, but the married Anthony does so rather freely. This implies that Adam wants both: to be married to a doting wife who is pregnant with his child, while also being free to pursue other women without being vilified for it. He views marriage as a trap, like a spider web luring in prey, but cannot resist the lull of stability as a safety net.

The spiders denote fear, but also Adam's view of women

Arachnids crawl all over the story of "Enemy,"  towering over giant buildings or cowering in fear. A blink-and-you-miss-it reference to a poster for "The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" links the spider imagery to Adam's fear of women. Well, not women per se, but rather what a committed relationship entails — which also explains why we see a huge tarantula about to be crushed under a heel in the opening sex club scene. The fresh set of club keys handed over to Adam signifies this latent desire to crush the chains of monogamy and commitment in favor of unchecked adultery. Yet we never see the spider being crushed, as Adam is unable to squash his contrarian impulses or stick to one ethical code. He's doomed to flit between the two until one of these warring selves is killed.

The death of the double, Anthony, should have marked the death of those adulterous impulses that were rooted in fear. After all, Mary dies with Anthony in the crash, their double death signifying Adam's subconscious attempt to end these relationships and return to his wife. This almost happens when Adam and Helen engage in tender intercourse. However, the club keys, which are a symbol of a hedonistic life shrouded in duplicitous anonymity, snap Adam out of this hard-earned salvation. He falls back into the old patterns even after his double is destroyed, embracing his fears and desires as himself  ... which feels even bleaker than the concept of a subconscious doppelgänger indulging in excesses to absolve the primary self of guilt.

The ending, where Adam views Helen as a cowering spider instead of a macabre threat, spells doom. He has accepted his worst impulses, and what terrified him before, only fills him with resigned indifference now.

Details you might have missed in Enemy

When Adam goes to the video store to rent the film, the song playing in the background is "The Cheater" by Bob Kuban & The In Men, which talks about the ugliness of adultery and the tragic rejection of love in favor of something hollow and fleeting. This is one of the clues that tie Adam to Anthony and reveal his true heart.

The guard at the talent agency meets Adam (mistaking him for Anthony), and says he hasn't visited for six months. Helen is exactly six months pregnant when the events occur, hinting that Adam had to leave his dreams of being an actor behind in favor of a more stable job (like that of a college professor) to support his wife and child.

Personality differentiators between the two are parsed through the lens of lifestyle choices. Anthony always looks coolly confident and put together, while Adam looks disheveled and insecure. Anthony is also partial to organic blueberries, and when Adam tells his mother that he doesn't like blueberries, she quips, "Of course you do." This is yet another sign of their warring selves: the primary self is in denial of the double's preferences, despite them being the same. This psychological distancing is a coping mechanism to evade guilt, but discontentment haunts Adam and leads him straight to his double. 

Circling back to the Hegel and Marx quote, it is clear that Adam is doomed to repeat history. His transgressions were deeply tragic the first time, as this was a man running away from his fears/anxieties surrounding commitment while chasing an idealized, egotistic self. The second time, however, is farcical, as growth and change are rejected without thought at the first sign of temptation.

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Users' Reviews

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Navaneethakrishnan K 940 days ago

Very nice movie and fantastic experience while watching this movie we are already know many lines but when we saw this type of movie again and again we would know which is good or bad so many ingredients mixed in this movie.

Sylent Screamer 948 days ago

one time watch movie, how come directors & producers make fool of public by saying Singapore and shot most of the movie in Dubai , atleast the director should have made sure not to capture Dubai landmarks .. over the top action scenes like always in Vishal movies ..story was interesting

Natarajan 955 days ago

In the recent times, Vishal's movies are very technical and very interesting. I enjoyed the movie after a very long time. Like "Irumbu Therai" vishal has given an another interesting movie. Every scene has a reason behind it and you will enjoy the movie for the full duration.

Meyyappan Ramanath 966 days ago

R Sridhar 973 days ago

Below average movie .. Over hype given ...

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Enemy Movie Review: This Vishal-Arya Action-Film Is Formulaic, Rudimentary, Predictable And Pretty Fun

Director: Anand Shankar Cast: Vishal, Arya, Thambi Ramaiah, Prakash Raj, Mamta Mohandas, Mrinalini Ravi, Karunakaran Language: Tamil

If you're seen any of Anand Shankar's previous work, especially his debut Arima Nambi and sophomore effort Iru Mugan , you would have specific and somewhat subdued expectations from his recent outing Enemy . If you do, you might just return satisfied.

Enemy is the story of Chozhan (Vishal), a departmental store owner by day and maverick vigilante do-gooder by night. The film spends over 30 minutes establishing his childhood, his father's (Thambi Ramaiah) risk-averse nature, his relationship with retired CBI officer neighbour Paari (Prakash Raj) and his son Rajiv (Arya). These parts are rudimentary. It moves fast, and in annotated milestones. 

Sometimes, the annotations are insulting. For instance, to test the "photographic memory" skills of Chozhan and Rajiv, Paari asks a policeman to pretend to be a pickpocket. This police officer, on arrival promptly salutes Paari, stomping his feet on the ground and all, before asking, "how is my civilian clothes, sir?" Paari could have simply laughed this idiocy off. But no. Enemy is the kind of film that forces a dialogue that the get up is fine, but the over-enthusiastic salute is not, an explanation so stale that Prakash Raj himself was part of one such scene in Anniyan over 15 years ago.

Thankfully, the film moves to the present day and to a zone where writer-director Anand Shankar finds himself more comfortable in: Action. Vishal gets a loud, traditionally-mass intro, standing on top of Singapore high-rises, jumping through glass walls, breaking high-security safes and feeding people biriyani for good measure. Cinematographer R. D. Rajasekhar makes the action sequences, with tall glass buildings, colourful night clubs, big cranes, highway chases and what not, perfectly engaging, even if not entirely innovative. 

That's all there is to the film, though. The half-interesting butterfly effect-inspired trick — of setting up an apparently unrelated incident to change the course of action for something more sensitive — is rehashed so often, it feels ordinary. The boardroom discussions among Chinese businessmen about killing the Indian foreign minister is almost worse than its 7 Aum Arivu counterpart. When one Indian businessman suggests that they resort to murder, a Chinese businessman responds with "wait, we need to put this decision to vote!" There must be a joke somewhere there about democracy, China and crime.

After introducing Rajiv, the film stops taking any interest in suspense and resorts entirely to action. As a result, a lot of clues fall into Chozhan's lap. At one point, a child traces fluorescent tire marks to solve a crime! Chozhan just taps on laptops and finds dark-web account details of an assassin — code name: bounty hunter — who has been paid in bitcoins. They keep talking about the sophisticated nature of a wanted criminal who is never even known to have committed a crime. But on screen, you see Chozhan just trip and fall into clues!

Soon, the film gets highly predictable. So much so that the gentleman next to me in the theatre couldn't stop himself from predicting what'll happen next despite my stern glances. There is little that we haven't already seen. The film doesn't do much to hide its plot points either. But to Anand Shankar's credit, he uses this predictability to fuel anticipation. For instance, we know that Chozhan is going to show up to save the kidnapped kids, but we can hardly wait (or is it just me?). 

Mrinalini Ravi, as Chozhan's love interest, gets 1-2 tangential scenes and duet songs, in which she does the bare minimum. Mamta Mohandas, as Anisha, Rajiv's love interest, gets more screen space and has immense potential, to say nothing of how stunning she looks. But the film squanders it by fashioning her as your ordinary damsel in distress. Enemy doesn't know how to write its women at all — sexual violence, pregnancy, motherhood and needing-to-be-saved is all it can think of (even as a revolutionary dead mother is referred to a couple of times)!

Nor is it sure how to treat its audience. Karunakaran, who plays Vishal's friend, is the voice of the viewer. The hero is expected to explain his grand plans to him, so we lesser beings can understand what he intends. But, most often, his character ends up being the irritating idiot who only prolongs the scene unnecessarily. Enemy also tries to milk the Tamil diaspora sentiment, and fails miserably. There is nothing in the film to substantiate the jingoism, but hey, every film needs a cause, right!

Vishal as Chozhan is adequate. His best parts are the stunts. He is believable as the guy who makes those huge jumps and heavy punches. His weakest moments are emotional scenes and dance sequences. At one point, his discomfort transfers to the audience through the screen. Arya, for his part, gives him a tough fight at being terrible at emotional scenes. Their lack is over-compensated by Sam CS's background score.

The least effective part about Enemy is how it fashions itself as a high-concept film. "Anger is blinding you," "you were always egoistic" and "you're emotionally unstable" are thrown around to explain to us the actions of the hero and the villain. But on screen, they are rather lame. In the climax, this interaction between the two people in the middle of a grandly executed fight is laughable.

Yet, as a mass masala film, Enemy entertains. It keeps the momentum going and comes to a reasonable end. In a way, Enemy is like Vishal's dance — full-bodied, hard-working, energetic, confident, but entirely devoid of knack for the art. That doesn't make it unwatchable though.

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‘Enemy’ movie review: A convoluted cat-and-mouse action drama

Anand shankar’s film, after an elaborate and promising start, fizzles out after its leading men are introduced.

Updated - November 09, 2021 11:01 am IST

Published - November 04, 2021 05:30 pm IST

Vishal and Arya in ‘Enemy’

The first half hour of Enemy , directed by Anand Shankar, has a promising prologue. It reminded me of Ullasam as it involves two fathers and their respective schoolgoing sons.

Ramalingam (played by Thambi Ramiah) is so cautious about his son, Chozha, that he puts the coconut inside a small sackcloth bag before breaking it in a temple, lest a piece of shell pierces his son's eye. His mockers even give him the moniker 'Risk' Ramalingam. His risk-averseness is not merely a gimmick. Anand, who has also written the film, provides a solid reason for why he is the way he is.

Meanwhile, Ramalingam's newly moved in neighbour, Paari (Prakash Raj), is a retired cop who has overcome assassination attempts and suffered bullet injuries. Paari wants his son, Rajeev, to be strong, bold and brilliant and thus trains him to be a cop. The training includes solving 4 by 4 cubes, low-plank-crawls under an obstacle and other exercises. When young Rajeev complains of pain during the plank crawl, Paari adds more weight on his back. "You should learn to endure pain. Only then can you overcome your enemies," he tells his son.

Chozha, meanwhile, imbibes Paari's lessons secretly from next door. He even flicks one of the many cubes and solves it overnight. Ramalingam because he wants his son to stay away from risks. And, Rajeev, because Chozha is better than him. He dislikes Paari praising him more.

Anand takes about half an hour for this setup, even if it delays the introduction of the stars — Vishal and Arya. The writing is layered too. It is the story of two single fathers wanting their sons to be like themselves. There is also jealously brewing within Rajeev because his father appreciates Chozha more than him. At this point, a mysterious murder separates the two boys.

• Cast: Vishal, Arya, Thambi Ramaiah, Prakash Raj, Mamta Mohandas, and more
• Director: Anand Shankar
• Storyline: How jealousy turns a boyhood competition into a life-and-death rivalry

This was a solid setup for a cat-and-mouse game between Chozha and Rajeev (at least that is what the trailer and the title promised).

But, like a Deepavali firecracker that sparks for a long time, raising our anticipation, only to fizzle out, the film starts to fumble after this promising build-up.

Anand manages to keep us guessing on a few occasions. For instance, just as we predict the film to be a game of oneupmanship between a cop and a thief, we are proven wrong.

But soon after the main stars of Enemy , Vishal and Arya, appear on screen, the film starts its descent. By now, Vishal looks after a supermarket in Singapore with his father. But he is also proficient in hacking, superb in hand-to-hand combat, and is an excellent marksman. If the Avengers were recruiting in Singapore, he would have been a frontrunner.

Arya, meanwhile, has become one of the world's deadliest assassins. Despite the muscles, Arya lacks the menace of a deadly assassin. Even when he threatens to kill a bunch of children, he evokes neither fear nor anger. The women in the movie, Mamta Mohandas and Mirnalini Ravi, hardly have anything to do.

The writing also slackens after the setup. Anand brings into the plot the problems of Tamil migrants and Indo-China politics for reasons little known to us.

Despite the implications of protagonists being geniuses, none of their acts to outdo each other is particularly clever. Maybe that is why, in the end, they abandon brains for brawn and settle their scores over a bloody brawl.

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