Sneakers (1992)

Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Starring Robert Redford, Mary McDonnell, Sidney Poitier, David Strathairn, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, River Phoenix, Timothy Busfield, Eddie Jones, Stephen Tobolowsky, Donal Logue, Lee Garlington, James Earl Jones. [PG-13]

Featherweight time-killer is something of a low-tech techno-thriller where people use jargon to explain away credibility lapses, and breeziness is a substitute for suspense. Former 60s radical Redford leads an industrial security hacker team that’s hired by the government to steal a MacGuffin, which turns out to be a universal code breaker (best just call it a “MacGuffin” and ignore the silliness in the details); think the job’s a set-up and they’ll be betrayed by the same people who hired them? A good cast fights against a mediocre script, since most of them are just plugged into dual-character type matches—everyone gets a piece from column A (the black guy, the blind guy, the kid, etc.) and a piece from column B (conspiracy theorist, former flame, communications phenom, etc.) and that’ll do. Not terrible, but it should have been faster and funnier, or gone the more serious route and generated actual tension and thrills. And talk about a feeble bunch of villains…as Poitier declares, “There isn’t a government on this planet that wouldn’t kill us all for that thing,” but this lot couldn’t be relied on to kill a cornered slug. Demonstrates one of those unwritten screenwriting rules/clichés: anyone shown in a flashback prologue who disappears “into the unknown” before the transition to the present day story will inevitably make a grand re-entrance before the end, usually as the secret antagonist. The final scene gets so cutesy that it borders on the nauseating. Contains a fun Easter Egg for fans of Redford’s Three Days of the Condor.

49/100