As with all writing from the early nineteen-nineties that touches upon computer-based technologies, the limited grasp of the information revolution on the way is adorable. This was written from the student newspaper The Pointer. I think it was one of my earlier pieces, which might explain why we evidently hadn’t settled on a style choice for the title of the films (in quotes? italicized?) leaving it simply capitalized, which looks wholly inadequate to me know. I left that formatting in place, but I did fix the editing mistake the printed the name of a certain Academy Award-winning trailblazer as Sidney Mathematician.

According to one of characters in the new film Sneakers, “there’s a new war being fought out there.” It’s not a war about bombs, missiles and guns, Instead, it’s a war where the most powerful individuals are the one that hold all of the information. It’s a hard claim to dispute. It’s beginning to seem as though there’s no single aspect of our lives that isn’t dependent upon computers. All of the data of our respective lives is wrapped up and bound in hard drives and floppy disks across the nations. Theoretically, then, the most powerful person in the world is the person who can access all of it. They can twist truth, eliminate facts and insure that there are no more secrets.

The driving force behind the movie is a little black box that holds the key to breaking through otherwise impervious computer codes and gaining access to the top secret files across the country. It’s that little black box that is the goal of a group of technical wizards–all with troubled, law-bending pasts–who get recruited by a pair of government agents to steal it away from the mathematician who created it. The team is headed by longtime computer fraud fugitive Martin Bishop (Robert Redford) and includes an ex-C.I.A. agent named Crease (Sidney Poitier), a gadget-loving conspiracy fanatic (Dan Aykroyd), an awkward computer hacker (River Phoenix) and a blind sound expert (David Strathairn). After they complete the job, they find themselves caught in a complex web of deceit and a forced to pull off the greatest scheme of all time.

Sneakers is a techno-thriller that successfully integrates fascinating technology into an engrossing storyline. Director Phil Alden Robinson, who also directed Field of Dreams, has a real flair for keeping the story moving and using spectacular effects, making a tense phone call to a government agency more thrilling than the numerous explosions and car crashes that usually fill Hollywood action pictures. Watching the way these actors develop their characters and play off of one another is an absolute delight.

There are some nasty plotholes that are hard to ignore, and a combustible romance between Robert Redford and Mary McDonnell is so underdeveloped that it often becomes a mere distraction. Nonetheless, Sneakers remains a thoroughly enjoyable venture into the war of information where the gravest casualties are the secrets best left undiscovered.