Rating: Summary: Sleeper Thriller, Fun,Good wins over Evil on Widescreen DVD! Review: Sneakers is a great sleeper techno gadget thriller. Robert Redford leads a fantastic, charismatic ensemble team (Sidney Poitier, Dan Akroyd, River Pheonix, Mary McDonnell & David Strathairn)in this outstanding movie! The villian is perfect too. (Ben Kingsley)Summary: The Redford Security Expert Team is hired by the NSA (National Security Agency) to recover the ultimate BLACK BOX from a powerful corporate magnate villian (Kingsley), who happens to be Redfords old college friend. This Black Box can decode any program!! All turns out not so friendly and the techno cat & mouse game thriller begins. Outstanding value and the Widescreen DVD is an excellent transfer. This is a fun movie & Redford is at his best. Enjoy.
Rating: Summary: Pleasant, but not that exciting Review: Sneakers is the simple story of a man whose past catches up to him. This could be high-drama, and yet that isn't the overall mood of this film -- instead, it seems like the movie is going for a sort of Butch and Sundance in high-tech-land, without Butch. In place of a second lead, Martin Bishop (Robert Redford) gets four friends who just happen to also be his employees in a firm that essentially investigates businesses security systems. These friends are played by really fine actors, including the superb Sidney Poitier. Unfortunately, some of the characterizations are stereotypes, and most of these excellent actors are not given enough screen exposure. The story centers around Bishop/Redford, and at times it seems like there are almost too many additional characters, good guys and bad guys. This takes focus away from the plot, which is a cute story of high-tech intrigue that is more entertaining than exciting. To draw in a female crowd, Bishop/Redford has an ex-girlfriend that, in the midst of some dangerous times, he decides to woo into returning to his embrace. Maybe he should have handled his dangerous problems first? Oh, but he is Robert Redford so he does get the girl, wins at the intrigue, turns into the hero and gets some pro-liberal Democratic political messages into the script as well. I found that this film was actually lots of fun, despite its drawbacks, until a scene came up that threw me. Bishop is kidnapped and locked into the trunk of a car. Transported, he only knows his location by the sounds he has heard along the way. Once safely returned, his friends pick his brain to determine what the sounds were, including a cocktail party he said he heard which turns out to be a geese farm with lots of clucking. This is nearly a word-for-word rip off of an old Rock Hudson film, Blindfold (which by the way was a lot more exciting and a lot more entertaining). Sneakers ends, too, with a rather ridiculous segment where everyone is negotiating with the NSA (played too briefly by James Earl Jones) for their fantasy toys like a Winnebago in exchange for turning over the stolen super-duper mystery decoder that was at the heart of the plot. I suppose it was all played for laughs, and some of it was amusing. On the whole, the technological antics are quite dated, looking rather feeble in comparison, say, with the Lone Gunmen of the X-Files. Mary McConnell does an admirable job as Bishop/Redford's girlfriend, and refreshingly, she is mature enough to come off as being close to his age (films pairing older men with much younger women are getting pretty boring by now). Ben Kingsley plays the bad guy, although he is never all that menacing. I was sorry to see him in a film like this after he did such a fine job with the far more meaningful Ghandi. You will enjoy this film if you like light-weight mystery and intrigue or if you are a fan of one of the stars.
Rating: Summary: Excellent Escapist Entertainment! Review: While Sneakers boasts an incrediblely talented ensemble cast, the focus in this fun movie is never on just one character for too long of a period, and the result is a great escapist tale, and truly entertaining as well. There are so many great moments contained in Sneakers that it takes several viewings to really understand just how fine those moments are! David Strathairn's "Mother" character really stands out, and the scenes where he slowly begins putting together a simulation soundtrack as to what Redford's character "Marty" heard while kidnapped and in the trunk of a car, are spellbinding! Spellbinding as well is the performance of Ben Kingsley, who takes his time getting to the screen, but it's worth the wait as he ever so slowly steals the movie away from the rest of the cast. His "chat" with Marty, where he, "Cosmo," finally reveals himself to Marty, and then launches into a discourse of what the real world, in his eyes, is really like and all about, is stunning! This is one of his best performances, and while certainly not his longest, it's incredible to watch him more than hold his own with Redford in their scenes together! Timothy Busfield's turn as a bad guy is great fun, similar to but much more sinister than his brother-in-law role in Field Of Dreams.....here's hoping he gets the opportunity to take on some more of these types of roles in the future. And what a treat to see an actor the calibur of Sidney Poitier in this one......he certainly has his fine moments here as well, and the scenes that showcase his ability to be greatly agitated yet under complete control all at the same time are pure acting lessons! Great fun, great story, excellent cast........it's all here for the viewing.
Rating: Summary: PC Users Beware Review: Sneakers is, without a doubt, one of my all time favorite movies. However, this DVD has some serious problems if you intend to view it on a PC DVD-ROM drive. A file allocation error renders the first half of the movie unreadable to most PC DVD drives (precise technical details are widely availible on the internet). This is not a problem for most standalone players. So if you're like me and use your PC as your DVD player, I'd suggest looking into the VHS edition.
Rating: Summary: A movie that just feels different. Review: This is a movie that feels like a new experience every time you watch it. You'll remember the characters, plot, and even the lines, but there's something immersive about it that will warrant repeat viewings. Maybe it's the music, the performances, the cinematography, or the writing. Maybe it's a perfect combination of every element. Rather than go on about the plot, I'm going to recommend this movie purely based on my own enjoyment of it. It has a little bit of everything. Humor, drama, and LOTS tension. There's little that could be viewed as offensive, and our heroes are genuinely likable characters. The DVD itself is pretty bare-bones, but I doubt we'll see a special edition of this sleeper anytime soon, so it seems like a wise purchase to me.
Rating: Summary: GOOD OLE SNEAKERS Review: Mission Impossible? Ugh! If you want a real hi-tech movie, check this one out. There's a great cast: Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, River Phoenix and James Earl Jones just to name a few. The plot: Redford is in charge of a company where they intentionally break into banks and stuff to see how tight their security is. There's some really funny parts, but also some really serious, witty parts. The story soon starts to get more complicated as they go after this "black box" that can decrypt computer codes or something. In short, they can have access to the FBI, CIA, airports, whatever. Very easy to follow movie. I'm not usually a Robert Redford fan, but this movie is the one exception.
Rating: Summary: A galaxy of talents Review: Stephen Tobolowski gives a fabulously over-the-top performance as Dr. Werner Brandes, defining a new phase in his career as an unparalleled supporting actor. He gives the role unprecedented depth and importance; let's not forget, Sneakers was made just a year before Groundhog Day. We all remember Tobolowski's astounding portrayal of insurance salesman Ned Ryerson! Do you really believe that that performance would have been possible without his appearance in Sneakers? I believe that the excellence with which Tobolowski created his role helped drive others in the cast to give equally stellar performances; not to be outdone, David Strathairn gives a particularly compelling performance as "Whistler" that is both dirty and idealistic. He and Dan Akroyd's "Mother" pair to make an incorrigible but loveable duo with a one-two punch! Conclusion: Sneakers is a brilliant constellation of stars, big and small!
Rating: Summary: setec astronomy Review: if you are as big a fan of Sneakers as I am, you will know what i am talkiing about when I say "hell yeah!" Honestly I haves een this movie more than 20 times and it keeps getting better. Redford! Poitier! Ackroyd! Phoenix! McDonnell! Strathairn! Kingsley! Tobolowsky! Busfield! Do these names mean anything to you? they mean the world to me! Now I'm not some saleman or some guy who worked on the movie and is trying to get you to run out and buy it... nor do i work at amazon.com, but I URGE to to see this movie. Comedy, suspense, touching love story, good buddy flick and a slammin' soundtrack! Top Notch. That's a fact.
Rating: Summary: SNEEEEEKERS Review: Real good movie. It was pretty dramatic. It was one of River Phoenix's last flicks. Intelligent movie too, with the blind guy and what not.
Rating: Summary: Just a little black box... Review: I writing this review for reason of making up for all the other reviews that didn't give it 5 stars. You can't judgge every movie on how emotionally significant it is. Some movies are just Fun to watch; like Sneakers. I'm an avid fan of movies and I usually watch my favorites to death. But Sneakers has had that effect on me, I watch it. and watch it. And constantly enjoy the splendid characters, tireless classic lines, and a sense of thrill/suspence that never fades.
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