The Enemy Within
Unclear and Present Danger
Jamelle Bouie
4.7 • 660 Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2023
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “The Enemy Within,” a 1994 remake of John Frankenheimer’s “Seven Days in May,” starring Forest Whitaker and Jason Robards.
Like the original film, “The Enemy Within” concerns a military plot to depose the president and take control of the U.S. government. Like the original film, our hero is an Army advisor who would rather defend the Constitution than his superiors. And like the original film, the story is a race against the clock as the president and his allies try to stop their adversary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from executing his plan.
“The Enemy Within” stars Forest Whitaker as Colonel “Mac” Casey, Sam Waterston as President William Foster, Dana Delany as his chief of staff Betsy Corcoran, and Jason Robards as General R. Pendleton Lloyd.
The tagline for “The Enemy Within” is “You never know who your enemies are.”
You can stream the movie on HBO Max or rent it on iTunes and Amazon.
Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.
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And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The latest episode of our Patreon is on “Seven Days in May.” So you can listen to these two episodes to compare and contrast the two movies.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What if you lived in a country where an embattered president cut back the military? |
| 0:04.6 | What if the military decided to fight back with live ammunition and one soldier with no friends, no allies, had seven days to stop them? |
| 0:13.7 | Forrest Whitaker, Jason Robbins, the enemy within. |
| 0:17.5 | The HBO original movie critically acclaimed award-winning feature films that you'll see only on HBO, |
| 0:23.6 | Hollywood's brightest stars and television's most provocative stories, the HBO original movie, and now the enemy within. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. |
| 1:06.1 | I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. |
| 1:09.2 | I'm John Gans. I write a |
| 1:11.2 | substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I am the author of a forthcoming book about American |
| 1:17.7 | politics in the early 1990s called When the Clock Broke. And that will be out in June of 2024. |
| 1:29.7 | But if you really want to, you can order it now. |
| 1:32.3 | And I would appreciate it. |
| 1:33.9 | Yes, as I think we've been saying each episode, |
| 1:36.9 | when it comes to books, |
| 1:38.7 | pre-orders are very important. |
| 1:40.5 | Pre-orders are sort of, can make or break a book. |
| 1:43.1 | So if you're interested in this book, go to your local bookstore, go to your local Barnes & |
| 1:47.8 | Noble. |
| 1:48.3 | If you have one, wherever, request that they have the book in stock. |
| 1:53.4 | Pre-order the book so you can get it. |
| 1:55.4 | I'm currently flipping through a galley, a proof copy, and it's good. |
| 2:00.5 | Oh, yeah. Thank you. It's very good. I do you like it? |
| 2:04.5 | I think people will really enjoy it. Okay. And before I even go any further, if my audio sounds a little |
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