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Too Many Secrets
QuestionMarkMan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
1969. Two college computer hackers, Martin Brice and Cosmo, are hackin’ away late at night. Martin decides to make a pizza run. While he’s away the cops show up and bust Cosmo.
Cut to the present.
Martin (Robert Redford) has now changed his last name to Bishop. He has continued his life of sneaky hacking, but now uses his powers for good (or at least is using them legally). He runs a special team of misfits:
the conspiracy nut (Dan Aykroyd),
the surly ex-CIA guy (Sidney Poitier),
the young guy (River Phoenix),
and the blind guy (David Strathairn) – who together get hired by banks and other organization to test their security systems by breaking into them. Then the NSA show up. They reveal to Martin that they know about his past, but are willing to overlook certain things if he and his team will retrieve a special decoding device from a mathematician. Long story short, they eventually realize that these guys aren’t the NSA and people start getting killed. Now Martin and his team need to stay alive, while uncovering the secrets of the device.
We've also got:
Super hot Mary McDonnell.
and Sir Ben Kingsley with a ponytail!
and Stephen Toblowsky.
This is a fantastic movie that not a whole lot of people have seen.
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Well, in truth, they didn’t make ‘em like this back in 1992 either. I don’t know that there is any era where Sneakers truly fits in, now that I’m thinking about it. Though it definitely harkens back to a simpler time when a star-studded thriller could still be fun without helicopter chases, shaky-cam, and epic martial arts fights. It is kind of like The Conversation processed through the mass-appeal machine. There is nothing big or flashy about Sneakers. Nothing profoundly iconic. It is just good. Very good. It is almost hard to put a finger on the source of its goodness.
In fact, there are many reasons why Sneakers shouldn’t work. The characters on Martin’s team are somewhat poorly defined (a glaring hole which is cleverly plugged by some great casting). We never learn how the team was formed, or how they know Martin. While they each have personalities, they don’t necessarily have characters. Aykroyd and Strathairn are at least given quirky traits to delineate them (paranoid, blind). But much is made of the fact that Poitier used to be in the CIA, and it seems like at some point we’ll learn why he left/was kicked out. But we don’t really. And Phoenix barely even has a personality; there is nothing to give us a bead on him until the final scene of the film. But it doesn’t really matter, because it is Phoenix (which meant a lot more in 1992 than it does now, granted). Same for Poitier. More importantly, the rapport between Martin’s team is movie-fun-time at its best. The actors all click and the dialogue provided by Robinson and co-writers Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes is William Goldman-grade genial banter at its finest.
This is the sort of movie that sadly always gets lost to time. Because there is no reason you need to see it. It is not a definitive masterpiece of its genre, and Robinson has not had the kind of career that will inspire future generations of film buffs to examine his oeuvre; there will never be Phil Alden Robinson completists. But if you watch it. You’ll like it.
The highest praise I can think to give the movie is this…
From talking to people about Sneakers over the years, I would say the world can easily be broken down into two groups of people: 1) those who have never seen Sneakers, and 2) those who love Sneakers.
So what are you waiting for?
QuestionMarkMan on
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I own this one because it's a really enjoyable movie.
"You...you could have anything in the world and all you want....is her phone number?"
"Yes."
It really harkens back to spy thrillers from the early '70s. I appreciate the fact that it's not full of bullshit visual effects and gratuitous action scenes. It's just a solid, intelligent movie that relies on the characters working (and therefore the actors doing their g-d job), and I love it.
sort of like a tech thriller in the same vein as War Games
I like that kind of thing, with the old school computers and the eightiest styles
Might check it out
and remember none of it
something about a bridge?
I think I need to rewatch the Conversation at some point because I kind of hated it when I saw it
but I was also 14 and not at all prepared for a movie that was quite that slow
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
And seriously, Mary McDonnell is SO hot in this movie.
It's too bad I don't have my Sneakers Av/Sig anymore.
well now.
The Conversation fucking owns
Robert Redford, yo
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
i sincerely hope you're not including Hackers as part of that triumvirate
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Edit: Aw man it's not on instant.
son are you drain bramaged?
Hackers has a scene where two machines fight over a VHS tape. like, what.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
And a winnebago.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
You're doing an excellent job of backing up my argument there, and I appreciate it.
it does do the annoying thing of having a scene where they "enhance" an image to see a small detail more clearly but otherwise yeah, I remember it being pretty plausible
Prophetic!
Somehow I've never seen this Sneakers movie, and it has a lot of dudes I like in it.
I hope they remake it in ten years with moderner technology
Dear satan I wish for this or maybe some of this....oh and I'm a medium or a large.
shame it's not on instant
this is an outrage!
Wargames
is
the
best
movie
ever
.
and trundled off to the jungle
off she rode with a trumpety trump
trump trump trump
just saying it's a good film that's kind of been forgotten over the years
edit: though I just realize it's an amazing coincidence that both Wargames and Sneakers are both films I actually saw in a theater just after their release, in an era before I was even slightly interested in computers.
and trundled off to the jungle
off she rode with a trumpety trump
trump trump trump