A the charming Robert Redford stars in 1992’s gem Sneakers, a high-tech (for its time) adventure set in a post-Cold War, pre-internet world, when virtual reality was in its infancy and Fears surrounding cyber warfare were mounting.
Martin Bishop (Redford) leads a group of Ocean’s Eleven-style cyber experts who work to expose the security dangers facing banks and corporations. After the team is approached by two alleged NSA officers threatening to expose Bishop’s shady past, the group finds themselves blackmailed into using their skills to uncover and retrieve an elusive black box.
Their investigation leads them to mathematician Dr. Gunter Janek (Donal Logue), who has apparently been paid off by the Russians and under cover of a research project named Setec Astronomy (a rather clever anagram for “too many secrets”) has developed. a mathematical theory code that will make encrypted files universally obsolete. Under surveillance, Bishop and his companions learn that Janek has hidden this code on a computer chip inside the black box. After retrieving the device, Bishop and his crew’s curiosity gets the better of them, so they plug the chip into their desktop computers during their post-mission celebrations. The device they’ve been hired to recover is capable of cracking access codes to all major computer systems around the world – the ultimate decryptor.
The film is full of Oscar winners and nominees. Alongside Redford on his team of hacktivists are Sidney Poitier as former CIA officer Donald Crease; Dan Aykroyd as wide-eyed conspiracy theorist Darren “Mother” Roskow; and David Strathairn as Irwin “Whistler” Emery, a blind genius with a keen sense of hearing who proves invaluable to the band. River Phoenix rounds out the likeable crew as reserved and socially awkward tech wizard Carl Arbogast — a role that was something of a departure for the then 21-year-old heartthrob. Bishop’s ex-girlfriend, Liz Ogilvy (Mary McDonnell), is thankfully not shunned as another love interest, but included as a participant in the gang’s mission.
Sneakers is a hybrid of genres – part thriller, part heist, part crime movie. It’s more cerebral than action-oriented, and Bishop and his gang rely on their wits on smart gadgets to achieve their goals. Director Phil Alden Robinson weaves moments of levity into the serpentine plot – point out to the team doing a celebratory dance to Aretha Franklin’s chain of lunatics, or Redford slipping and falling as he attempts to slip on a bank counter during a burglary.
A key addition to Sneakers’ creative arsenal is being heard and not seen. James Horner (later known for his orchestral compositions on blockbusters such as Titanic and Avatar) composed the film’s minimalist score, bringing tension and propulsion to the hacking scenes.
Sneakers are all about secrets – who has them, who wants them, who’s willing to share them, and how far someone might go to reveal them. In a warning speech delivered by Bishop’s ideological opponent, Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) at the film’s climax, he declares that the world is not run by guns, energy or money: ” It’s not about who has the most balls, but who controls the information. .” What we see, hear, how we work, what we think – it all depends on the data.
Sneakers is set in a world before Google, Facebook, and smartphones, and despite being nearly 30 years old, its concerns about privacy and moral ambiguity over access to personal and corporate information are chilling.