Thomas Reynolds

Thomas Reynolds is the main antagonist of the 1998 conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State. He is portrayed by Jon Voight, who also portrayed Paul Serone in Anaconda and Mr. Sir in Holes.

Character overview
Reynolds is a mid-level offical in the National Security Agency who has been passed over several times for promotion to Director. His frustrated ambition, along with an unyielding belief that national security is more important than civil liberties, leads him to frequently abuse his power by violating people's right to privacy with heavy surveillance.

He has a much younger wife, and presumably grown children, as he is portrayed in one scene as spending Christmas morning with his grandchildren.

In the film
Reynolds lobbies aggressively for a Senate bill that would allow near-total surveillance of the entire country, and goes to visit the bill's biggest critic, Sen. Phil Hammersly. When Hammersly refuses to support the bill, Reynolds orders his bodyguards to kill him. Unbeknownst to him, however, wildlife researcher Daniel Zavitz had been recording in the srea and captured the murder on film. When Zavitz calls a reporter about the murder, Reynolds has his surveillance team follow Zavitz, and kill him in a way that makes it look like a traffic accident - but not before Zavitz  gives the recording to his old friend, lawyer Robert Dean.

Even though Dean has no idea what he is in possession of, Reynolds decides to destroy his credibility to prevent him from going public with the recording. Reynolds bugs Dean's house, and plants false evidence implicating him in working for mobster Paulie Pintero and cheating on his wife with ex-girlfriend Rachel Banks - the same reporter Zavitz called. After Dean is fired and thrown out of the house by his wife, Reynolds tries to have him killed by sending one of his assassins to meet him under the guise of surveillance expert "Brill". Dean escapes, however, and meets the real "Brill", aka Edward Lyle, who helps Dean decipher the recording and identify Renolds as the killer. Reynolds then kills Banks and implicates Dean in her murder.

Dean and Lyle try to beat Reynolds at his own game by secretly recording one of the Senate bill's supporters having an affair, and depositing large sums of money into Reynolds' bank account to make it look like he is taking bribes. Lyle arranges a meeting with Reynolds, pretending to be a blackmailer who is trying to sell the recording; he is in fact wearing a wire tap, and records Reynolds incriminating himself. Reynolds holds Lylle and Dean at gunpoint and demands to know where the recording is. Thinking quickly, Dean says that Pintero has it. He leads Reynolds to Pintero; the mobster has no idea what Reynolds is talking about, but Reynolds thinks he is trying to play hardball in the negotatiations. An intense exchange follows in which both Reynolds' and Pintero's men draw their weapons on each other and open fire, killing Reynolds and most of his team, as well as Pintero.