Sneakers is a caper film starring Robert Redford, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, Ben Kingsley, and James Earl Jones.
Martin Brice (Redford, Gary Hershberger as a younger man) narrowly escapes getting busted by the FBI in college and goes underground. Years later, as Martin Bishop, he runs a ragtag crew of thieves and hackers including ex-CIA Crease (Poitier), blind phreak Whistler (Strathairn), young intern/hacker Carl (Phoenix), and conspiracy theorist Mother (Akroyd) as penetration testers (lol). And that's all well and good, but then the NSA hires them to steal a little black box from a mathematician (Donal Logue) and they wind up mixed up in a shadowy plot leading back to Martin's old partner Cosmo (Kingsley), who's been working for the mob for decades and is intent on using the black box to destroy the world's economy.
One thing I really like about this movie is that they manage to craw several heists/capers into it, rather than having it all lead up to one big one that gets revealed as we go. We get to see them doing their job by robbing a bank, stealing the black box (which involves not only physical hacking but some social engineering), stealing the box again from Cosmo, and then escaping from that whole clusterfuck. It's several different types of action/heist scenes, but everyone has their specialty and we understand those skills enough that when characters have to step outside them, it's actually meaningful.
Sneakers comes out of the same team and some of the same mindset as War Games - the future shock coming with the realization that threat and dangerous people are more likely to use computers and data to wreak havoc than weapons and literal destruction (or using one to get to the other, I guess). What's interesting is that the plot holds up pretty well - sure, the tech is outdated, but the idea of information being the new currency and the new weapons is perfectly relevant. And of course the movie is so well cast that the performances hold up, too. There's real chemistry amongst the cast, and when Mary McDonnell's Liz comes back to the group, it feels like a reunion with some stakes and some history.
In fact, the only two things about the movie I found...quaint, watching now, are a) that anyone is reverently afraid of the mafia and b) that the NSA didn't just shoot them all or disappear them and take the black box, rather than bargaining and giving them presents. But if you're going to have a deus ex machina, I guess you could do worse than James Earl Jones.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High
Next up: Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
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