CANON
FilmPhil Alden Robinson, 1992
Sneakers
ABOUT THE WORK
There are movies about technology that age badly because they were really about gadgets.
Sneakers lasts because it is about trust.
The machinery changes. The problem does not.
Robert Redford leads a group of specialists whose collective advantage comes from the fact that each person notices something different. Technical skill matters, but listening matters more. So do memory, improvisation, friendship and the ability to recognize that a system designed to appear secure may simply depend on everyone accepting its assumptions.
That makes Sneakers unusually prescient and humane for a movie about cryptography and surveillance.
The film is fun and playful enough to make competence entertaining without turning competence into fantasy. Everybody contributes. Everybody misses something. Somebody else catches it.
And underneath the jokes is an idea that has become considerably more serious since 1992:
Information is power largely because people keep building systems that require the public to sacrifice some amount of liberty for convenience.
Sneakers lasts because it is about trust.
The machinery changes. The problem does not.
Robert Redford leads a group of specialists whose collective advantage comes from the fact that each person notices something different. Technical skill matters, but listening matters more. So do memory, improvisation, friendship and the ability to recognize that a system designed to appear secure may simply depend on everyone accepting its assumptions.
That makes Sneakers unusually prescient and humane for a movie about cryptography and surveillance.
The film is fun and playful enough to make competence entertaining without turning competence into fantasy. Everybody contributes. Everybody misses something. Somebody else catches it.
And underneath the jokes is an idea that has become considerably more serious since 1992:
Information is power largely because people keep building systems that require the public to sacrifice some amount of liberty for convenience.