Sneakers
Complex but lighthearted thriller about computers and cryptography, government and espionage, secrets and deception and betrayal.
- Director: * Phil Alden Robinson
- Genre:Action / Adventure / Comedy / Crime / Mystery / Thriller
- Runtime:125 minutes
Cast
Jo Marr : College-Aged Cosmo (as Jojo Marr)
Robert Redford :. Bishop
Gary Hershberger : College-Aged Bishop
Sidney Poitier : Donald Crease
David Strathairn : Erwin ‘Whistler’ Emory
Martin Brice (Robert Redford), a hacker, has kept to his assumed name of Martin Bishop after accidentally avoiding capture and imprisonment for his activities in 1969, a fate that had fallen on his friend Cosmo (Ben Kingsley). In the present, Martin runs a tiger team of “security specialists” that use unorthodox methods of testing physical and electronic security for companies in San Francisco. The team includes Donald Crease (Sidney Poitier), a former CIA agent and a high-strung family man; “Mother” (Dan Aykroyd), a conspiracy theorist with unsurpassed technical skills and dexterity; Carl Arbogast (River Phoenix), a young genius; and Erwin ‘Whistler’ Emory (David Strathairn), a blind man with superb hearing. One day, Martin is approached by two National Security Agency agents, Dick Gordon and Buddy Wallace (Timothy Busfield, Eddie Jones), who reveal they are aware of Martin’s former life. In exchange for not incarcerating Martin, they ask Martin to recover a “black box” decoder device that mathematician Gunter Janek (Donal Logue) has been developing for the Russian government under the guise of a company called “Setec Astronomy”. Martin’s team, along with the help of his former girlfriend, Liz (Mary McDonnell), is successful in retrieving the box, appearing as an answering machine.
As the team celebrates, they become curious to the box’s function and begin to probe it. They learn that the box is a universal decryption device, allowing them to access any system in the world, as hinted by the anagram of “Setec Astronomy”, “Too many secrets”. Martin orders a lockdown until they can return the device to the NSA the next day. When Martin and Donald meet the agents to exchange the device, Donald discovers that Janek was murdered, and warns Martin off after he makes the exchange. The team soon learns that Gordon and Wallace were never NSA agents, and that Janek himself was working on the box for the NSA. Martin turns to a friend from the Russian consul, Gregor, who is able to identify Gordon and Wallace as rogue agents. Before Gregor can reveal more, the two are caught by fake FBI agents, who murder Gregor and frame Martin for it, and then kidnap Martin.
Martin awakes in an unknown location to find his aged friend Cosmo. Cosmo, bitter over being abandoned by Martin, reveals that he developed ties with an organized crime family while incarcerated, using his hacking skills for their benefit, and has been able to escape prison, and is now planning to use the black box to destabilize the world’s economy. Cosmo offers Martin the chance to work with him towards this end, but Martin refuses. Cosmo, in turn, uses the black box to connect Martin’s past with his present identity in police records, and then has his men take Martin back to the city. Martin reunits with his crew and has them relocate to Liz’ apartment. There, they call the NSA using complex call routing to prevent tracing and offer to recover the box in exchange for amnesty, which is agreed to. With Whistler’s help, Martin is able to recreate the route during his kidnapping to a toy company, a front for Cosmo. The team identifies Cosmo’s office, its security features, and the route to enter it, through the neighboring office of Werner Brandes (Stephen Tobolowsky). To obtain the necessary vocal passkeys, the team convinces Liz to go on a rigged computer date with Brandes. Read more
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