SNEAKERS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
SNEAKERS is a film directed by Phil Alden Robinson and written by Robinson and Lawrence Lasker & Walter Parkes. It stars Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, Sydney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, and David Strathairn. Rated PG, for minor violence.
SNEAKERS is an old-fashioned caper movie, despite its overlay of computers and high-techery. It is funny, likable, and very smooth. It is also, in all likelihood, nonsense and pointless at the end. It has a taut story and some wonderful actors who seem to be enjoying themselves. Director Phil Alden Robinson (FIELD OF DREAMS) along with Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker (WAR GAMES) put together a smooth, workable package with only a few deficiencies. It is perhaps a little too smooth to the point where the tension level is not high enough to call it a thriller, where the paranoia level is confined mostly to the very funny and very wigged out character played by Dan Aykroyd, and where politics is reduced a single evil genius (Ben Kingsley). The ostensible topic is cryptography, but the real subject is star vehicle. Also, it would have been nice if they had figured something for River Phoenix to do.
Indeed, Robert Redford turns in his best performance in years. After such bombs as HAVANA, his on-screen career could the kind of boost SNEAKERS is probably capable of giving it. Redford is not the smooth man-of-the-world, but a member of the over-the-hill gang, who stumbles, who bumbles. In its way, it is a courageous performance.
And it is a genuine pleasure to find Sidney Poitier on the screen again. I find him much more interesting and less on his dignity here than he's been since the end of the 50s. He is the sure anchor for the rest of the cast.
Mary McDonnell continues to impress me; I loved her as Kevin Kline's wife in the Lawrence Kasdan film of last year, and my enthusiasm then is more than justified by her performance now; the sexual tension between her and Redford's characters is very erotic without any overt bedroom hijinks.
As mentioned, Aykroyd does a near perfect turn on his character, a man who calmly believes the CIA is holding John Kennedy prisoner, inter alia.
Kingsley's performance is more problematical. Usually, it's the heavy who has the most fun in these movies; Kingsley's performance is more complex than mere scene-chewing, yet somehow it does not quite satisfy, which may more the writing than the acting. Does Redford's Martin Bishop really have to tell Kingsley's character that he's crazy; shouldn't that been made clear by the character himself?
The editing is intelligent and add much to all forms of tension in the film. The cast is first rate. The production values are high overall. There are lots of well-earned laughs. I just can't believe the story any more than I could believe the story of WAR GAMES. An plausible movie about the inherent threats to human liberty in the Information Age would be an important film. SNEAKERS is merely good entertainment. SNEAKERS is an entertaining film, not one to be taken too seriously, but certainly worth a matinee ticket.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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