MovieChat Forums > Sneakers (1992) Discussion > Crystal ball of tech predictions. Also t...

Crystal ball of tech predictions. Also the first white hat hackers shown

posted 9 years ago by Shawn_Chittle
5 replies | jump to latest

I saw this movie in college in 1992 in the theaters. It blew me away. No one was talking about the kind of stuff they were talking about. Looking back over 20 years later its incredible how much this movie holds up:

1. It correctly labels the NSA as a paranoid agency, hell-bent on spying on everyone - but especially Americans.

2. Cosmo's monologue at the end correctly predicts the internet (information) and its importance. There are very few wars with guns anymore, just like he says. It's all cyber attacks now.

3. So far as I can remember, the film introduces audiences to the first "white hat" hackers perhaps ever shown on film. Remember, they go in and "sneak" something and tell the client how they did it: a white hat hacker.

4. Cryptology advances / bugs get people very, very nervous. That device in the film; PGP. Heartbleed. Quantum computing. Tor. Etc.

The music, by Horner, is brilliant, but made all the more beautiful and captivating by soloist Branford Marsalis. It's one of the best soundtracks ever made.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] deinly1 9 years ago

Great post. Great film, it took on a subject very few movies even considered at that time, Hackers was another, but Sneakers was more cerebral. I must have watched it 30 times when I got it on vhs and it posed so many great questions, I mean who knew Akroyd actually thought like his character. I agree that it predicted so well the age we would enter when the Internet, which was in the infant AOL days, took off like a rocket from that point. I'm off to check the writer and thier other works now. ?

[–] the sphynx (11) 2 years ago

The points you made are excellent; the movie is ahead of its time on those things, and spot on about money.

OTOH, it has plot holes you can drive a Mack truck through, starting with the glaring fact that if Bishop has been on the run for twenty years, he doesn't need anyone to wipe his record clean, because the statute of limitations has long since expired on his youthful pranks. And you're asked to believe that such an incredibly valuable universal hacking machine would be left in an unguarded office, intact, and they wouldn't even bother plugging it into a cord or putting tapes in it to make it look like an actual answering machine. And that Cosmo wouldn't have checked inside the invaluable box before letting Bishop go. Etc. So I have very mixed feelings about the movie.

[–] moviechatterer (14951) 2 years ago

very good points , I'll have a stab at justifying them ....

Maybe Janek hadnt told the NSA how much progress he'd made and they didnt know there was the huge security risk , and janek just being a maths geek obsessed with the theory was too nieve to realise .

Cosmo .. checking ...
er ,
"forgot in the emotional heat of the moment of being reunited with his old friend and possibly teaming up again to change the world " ?

[–] moviechatterer (14951) 2 years ago

The first white hat hackers were
"The Whizz kids" - a kids tv show from early 80s