So, last year, I took up the “30 Day Movie Challenge” meme on Facebook as a means to pass the time during the pandemic. Then, on the 31st day, I kept going. Friends tossed me categories to name movies from, my only real rules being I couldn’t name anything more than once, and unless otherwise stated, it had to be a movie I had actually at some point in time seen. Various actors in their best roles were a popular category, and that meant someone named Sidney Poitier at some point. Now, I think Poitier is one of those great actors who always comes across as the coolest guy in the room, but I had already named all the movies I had seen him in. So, I looked over his filmography and found Sneakers, a movie I had seen a few times as a kid and vaguely remembered liking.
That just means I figured I should do a rewatch and see if it was as good as I remember. I don’t normally write reviews for movies I’ve seen before, but in this case, I think I will make an exception.
Sneakers is actually something of a real gem. The cast alone makes it worth a look. Robert Redford leads the cast as Martin Brice. As a college student, he and a pal named Cosmo did some computer hacking to spread the wealth around, but while Martin was off getting a pizza, Cosmo was arrested and sent to prison. Martin changed his last name to Bishop after hiding out in Canada for a while, but in the present, he runs a small company that tests security for banks by doing break-ins. His crew includes conspiracy theorist Mother (Dan Aykroyd), blind telecommunications expert Whistler (David Strathairn), former CIA agent and voice of reason Donald Crease (Poitier), and young hacker Carl (the late River Phoenix). Business isn’t great, but then the NSA comes knocking on Martin’s door. They know Martin’s past and are willing to clean his record if he gets his hands on some hardware from an eccentric computer genius (a young Donal Logue), and Martin might be able to pull it off with his crew and his ex Liz (Mary McDonnell). However, the NSA agents may not be who they say they are, and it looks like Martin’s old pal Cosmo (Ben Kingsley with a silly ponytail and a sillier American accent) may be hanging around somewhere. So, it might be a lot more dangerous for Martin and his crew than it appears to be.
Oh, as impressive as that cast is, consider it also includes character actor Stephen Tobolowsky and, in a small role, James Earl Jones.
That is one seriously talented cast, so why isn’t this movie maybe better remembered? It’s not because of the quality. It’s quite good. In fact, it’s mostly a lot of light fun. Even when Cosmo’s people prove inclined towards violence, this is still a fairly breezy film. Sometimes I find there are movies out there when the cast seems like just a bunch of fun people to hang out with. That more or less describes Sneakers to a tee: it’s just fun. There aren’t any particularly deep ideas going on here, and while there are no bad performances and all of the roles were well-cast, there likewise weren’t any really ground-breaking performances or scenes either. It’s just a bunch of actors performing in a heist comedy with some stakes that are probably much steeper than the movie makes them out to be.
And that’s just fine. Not everything has to be Citizen Kane.
Really, this was just a fun movie with fun characters, and I don’t think anyone could ask for more than that for a bit of light fun watching actors having fun playing fun characters. I don’t really have much to say about this one, but maybe sometimes, a movie can say what it needs to on its own, and as long as everyone involved knows what kind of movie they are making, then it should work out just fine for audiences.
Grade: B+
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