Sneakers (1992)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

Bishop (Robert Redford), a computer and security expert still nominally on the run from the government for non-sins committed in the 60s, leads a group of freelance weirdos doing the early 90s offline – and a little online – white hat hacking, with a clear Robin Hood streak. The rest of the team are former CIA man Crease (Sidney Poitier), the grown-up of the gang, blind man with excellent ears Whistler (David Strathairn), Forteana and conspiracy nut Mother (Dan Aykroyd, really going out of his comfort zone there), and young guy Carl (River Phoenix). When she and Bishop were still an item, ultra-straight Liz (Mary McDonnell) was also part of the group, but she’s still on good enough terms to help out when asked nicely.

Asking nicely isn’t the strength of the NSA, apparently. Instead, the agency is pressing our heroes into their service to steal a mysterious black box via the magic of not so veiled threats and money. At least our protagonists do have a challenging, and therefore interesting, job in acquiring it.

Unfortunately, once the heist is over, things get dangerous: the box itself is capable of cracking any kind of code and encryption used in the US; worse still, the NSA people aren’t actually working for the NSA but are private service bad guys in the service of one Cosmo (Ben Kingsley). And Cosmo just happens to be part of Bishop’s major past trauma. In any case, an object like the magical box belongs neither in his hand nor in that of the government, so a second heist will have to occur.

And make no mistake, Phil Alden Robinson’s Sneakers is, its outer appearance made out of badly understood and dramatized 90s hi-tech notwithstanding, in many regards a very traditional heist movie, belonging right next to films about sympathetic con-men sticking it to the Man in various forms in the less greed-minded side-arm of the genre.

As is typical, and perfectly fine, for the genre, Sneakers mostly throws plausibility out of the window for its version of the Rule of Cool, safe in the assumption an audience will let implausibilities slide in this context, if you just present them with enough charm. It’s absolutely the right choice, too, and if one hasn’t taken one’s monthly dose of ridiculous but fun plans nearly thwarted by silly problems, and perhaps hasn’t re-watched this in quite some time, Sneakers is a fine way to get one’s hit of these specific genre tropes.

Particularly because its cast is quite as fine as it is, with Redford, Poitier, Strathairn and the rest all providing some great middle-aged star power with performances that not just manage to create perfectly likeable two-note characters but also do the heavy work when it comes to balance the film’s considerable number of – often genuinely funny – jokes, quips and mildly silly situations with the more serious elements of the plot. It does help that most of these guys and the lady are all well versed in the serious as well as the funny stuff, and can shift from one acting stance to the other at a moment’s notice while keeping their characters whole. Well, I’m not terribly happy with Kingsley’s performance, I have to admit, because he falls into his rather typical trap of being all tics, bad accent and far-fetched body language when everyone around him is relaxed and giving the impression of the naturalistic even when portraying an implausible character type. One cannot blame the man for not putting any effort in, though.

On the direction side, things are a bit conservative, certainly never flashy and not exactly inspired. Which seems rather typical of a director whose handful of other films also never suggest much of a directorial personality beyond the ability to hold things together professionally and trust in his actors. While that’s not an approach to direction that’ll ever win many deserved prizes or just critical praise (yes, I know, he directed the curiously beloved by many Field of Dreams, but that thing’s terrible as well as terribly overrated), it works out very well indeed for Sneakers, whose actors are clearly happy to shoulder the main load of the film, and do so with a pleasant lack of vanity.

In short: The Red Ball Express (1952)

World War II, during the Allied invasion. Patton’s tank division is pushing forward so quickly, he’s regularly outrunning his supply lines. To keep things rolling towards Paris, the US military creates a mobile truck supply line through France, colloquially called the Red Ball Express by the grunts.

The units are thrown together, racially integrated (I believe that would have been the term then), and not necessarily manned with soldiers missed by their old comrades. The Red Ball Express unit the film is concerned with is lead by Lt. Chick Campbell (Jeff Chandler), who seems to be that curious war movie Lieutenant, a highly competent man who cares for his soldiers. The unit sergeant, Red Kallek (Alex Nicol) doesn’t see his commanding officer that way, though, for he knows him from civilian life and makes him responsible for the death of his brother.

Another problem, apart from the Wehrmacht, mine fields, and lots of mud, are the at times strained race relations, exemplified via the trials and travails of one Private Robertson (Sidney Poitier).

Shockingly enough for a movie made in 1952 by a white man (the great Budd Boetticher), Red Ball Express has more than one black character in a speaking role; even more shockingly, the film itself doesn’t treat its black characters any differently than it does the white ones, hell, they’re not even the odious comic relief. It’s shocking in the best possible way to see a film demonstrating that old promise of America of equality by simply, without grand gestures, actually treating people equally. The way the film resolves Robertson’s problems will obviously not be completely to the taste of the 2020s, but there’s a calm fairmindedness about the film’s serious moments that I’m not going to criticize from a distance of seven decades.

This treatment of social issues fits well with Boetticher’s direction style, a tendency to create verisimilitude through a calm look at all kinds of interactions, and through an eye for details that in this case helps fit the actual documentary footage the film uses to portray more than ten trucks or so into the rest of the movie. Boetticher always seems genuinely interested in the way people relate to each other, in the same way he is interested in the practical issues of driving trucks through a warzone. The humour and the romantic elements haven’t aged quite as well as the rest of the film, but since the narrative is very episodic, it simply makes sense to include episodes of levity, too.

And even though The Red Ball Express is so episodic, and therefore not following typical dramatic structure in every point (insert US war movie Ozu comparison here, if you like), there is room and budget for a couple of fine action sequences, particularly a fight against some German hold-outs early on, and a race through a burning French town right at the end.