Sneakers

Yet another film that's only got one other review in the team room (Link). Hey, am I destroying a whole load of Googlewhacks here? Is the environmental protection agency going to be pounding down my door for destruction of the natural habitat of the Googlewhack¹?

Sneakers: The American name for trainers, or slang for Spies. It's probably why it's almost unheard of in the UK, despite having sterling performances from Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier. In fact, this is one of the few Robert Redford films that I actually watch.

It's got some of the best and most humorous dialogue I've seen in a movie. It's sort of like a buddy movie, but with six 'buddies' Dan Aykroyd is on top form in this, delivering lines like 'Uh, Whistler, I hate to tell you this, but you're blind.' totally dead pan. And no man alive does cool quite like Sidney Poitier.

Basic plot: A box exists that can crack any encryption code out there. Two NSA agents hire Redford's band of sneakers to steal it. But is everything what it seems? And what exactly is SETEC Astronomy?

If you are a history buff, or know your history of hackers, there loads of trivia hidden (and in plain sight) in this movie. IMDB has most of it.

However this film also demonstrates that movie composers are lazy² and prone to copy themselves. Listen to it, and you'll hear the soundtrack to Apollo 13.

Score: B- Slightly dated concepts of computers and networks, but more than compensated for by being cool as...

OQ: 'The one thing I can't do is hurry.'

Trivia: Prof. Len Adleman is one of the three mathematicians who invented the RSA (he's the "A") cryptosystem, currently the pre-eminent method of encrypting any form of data in the world. Adleman served as a mathematical consultant on the film, and as well as providing technical guidance to the film, he also spent several days constructing the slides Janek displays at the college symposium on "unbreakable codes" (which took Adleman a considerable amount of time to create using primitive early-'90s computer graphics technology).

He waived his fee in exchange for allowing his wife to meet Robert Redford, since she had a huge crush on him. (Aww...ain't that sweet.)

However, director Phil Alden Robinson then had the slides transposed as oil crayon scribbles, on account of the notion that "that's what a regular mathematician would have done". Adleman later remarked that this was indeed true and what he would have done, and would have saved him days if only he'd known. From IMDB

¹ Did you know you can't 'Google' anymore? You can 'perform a Google', or 'go a googling' or even 'rip him a new google.' Google have told people that they cannot use the word Google as a verb any more. Which is a shame, because the phrase 'Google his ass.' is going to be sorely missed. Somehow substituting Yahoo or MSN in there, doesn't seem to work. I'm going to have to fall back on my patented 'IMDB his ass.'

² IMHO. My opinion, not Standard Life's, the club's, the committee's or the board's. There, that ought to satisfy legal.