Kino Lorber
Two brilliant idealists hover over a computer screen, white hat hacking. College friends Martin Brice (Robert Redford) and Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) are conspiring to do good in the world. Martin goes out for pizza and Cosmo winds up arrested and imprisoned. Martin goes into hiding to avoid prosecution.
I don’t want to give away too many plot points, because if you’ve seen Sneakers, you know, and if you haven’t, thirty plus years later or not, I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Writer/director Phil Alden Robinson knows how to tell a story.
Sneakers, Field of Dreams, and The Sum of All Fears are three of his best. (Sidebar: The Sum of All Fears is the best adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan aside from The Hunt for Red October)
This is a film about nefarious technological interference in politics, banking, elections and a variety of other things.
The cast is a brilliant combination of professional actors with deep dramatic and comedic chops. Robert Redford (now living as “Martin Bishop”) and Sidney Poitier lead Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell and River Phoenix on a journey that’s part espionage, part heist and all genius.
I’ve watched Sneakers, conservatively, fifty times in my life and I’ve never found myself bored. Sir Ben Kingsley plays a magnificent antagonist, managing the complicated emotions of pain and friendship mixed with a subtle menace that leaves no doubt he’s the bad guy. His simmering anger at Martin escaping prosecution while he suffered in prison, is the subtext for the entire film.
A brief appearance by Donal Logue, as a brilliant mathematician, is the catalyst for the story. He solves an incredibly complex cryptography problem, and once everyone realizes what it can do, everyone wants it. This leads to one of the many brilliant and quotable lines from the film. Sidney Poitier, delivering the line, “There’s not a government on Earth that wouldn’t kill us all for that box.”
The film is full of subtle and not so subtle comic relief, releasing the tension that builds over and over again as Martin and his rag tag band of security consultants try and unwind the Gordian Knot of complexity in the story.
It’s impossible not to draw parallels to today. One of the incredible things about Sneakers is aside from the technology, which has advanced infinitely since 1992, the film holds up incredibly well.
Think about AI and quantum instead of math based cryptography and tell me the story isn’t poignant. It’s impossible. You don’t need to adapt Russia as a nefarious international actor. They are in the film and they are today. The ideas that made Sneakers so special in 1992 are surprisingly relatable today as information security or the lack thereof, evolves.
It’s this part of filmmaking that is often lost. Films that don’t hold up decade to decade are the norm, so when you find one that can stand the test of time, it’s worth the investment of time to watch it. How many times have you rewatched something and said to yourself, “wow that didn’t hold up,” or “yikes, that wouldn’t get made today.” It happens to me all the time.
The film is full of subtle and not so subtle comic relief, releasing the tension that builds over and over again. Dan Aykroyd plays a conspiracy theorist on the side of the angels, salting in amazing and amusing quips throughout. David Strathairn, plays a blind tech, who uses his preternatural hearing and technical acumen to support the team, including an incredibly amusing joke about a dinner party that still makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it.
There were also some incredible and fun cameos. James Earl Jones makes a brief appearance. The underappreciated Stephen Toblowski plays a small, but key role. Timothy Busfield and the late Eddie Jones are excellent as two of Cosmo’s henchmen.
The technical side of the film matches the high quality of the cast. Mainly because you don’t notice them. The lighting, sound, locations and angles are all what you would expect from a top notch and well made film. The sound is especially good. The click of a keyboard, punctuates a tense moment. The echo of a gunshot in a confined space. The expansion joints of a bridge. All of these are key plot moments in a great film and the attention to detail in making sure they are heard is a testament to Milton Burrow and his sound team.
Extras include audio commentaries, making of documentary and trailer.
When you take a recipe of superior casting, acting, writing, and technical proficiency, the result is a timeless and prescient adventure that will take you to the edge of your seat and make you think while you’re there. Take the two hours and watch Sneakers. You won’t be disappointed,
5 out of 5 stars
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