Jesse Hassenger argues in Paste that Sneakers aged better than almost all computer thrillers because much of it is an analog caper on the cusp of digital transformation. Martin Bishop (Robert Redford) runs a crew of misfits with shady pasts who test banks’ security by breaking in. A job for what looks like the NSA puts a black box that can decrypt any computer system into the hands of Cosmo (Ben Kingsley), Bishop’s old college friend from his radical days. Getting it back means beating voice recognition, dodging motion detectors and letting the blind Whistler (David Strathairn) drive, with the box as the film’s one piece of tech show-off. The Comeback marked the 30th anniversary of the September 1992 release by crediting Cosmo’s speech about a war over who controls the information with predicting the instant-information age. Writers Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes had already done WarGames. Thirty years later, the guard at the front desk is still easier to crack than the crypto.
The 1992 hacker caper Sneakers turns 30
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