SNEAKERS (1992)

When a highly skilled if unorthodox team of corporate security experts termed "sneakers" is hired by two government agents (whose government, we're not immediately sure) to retrieve a universal code-breaker – the code-breaker, as one of them calls it – there ensues a lighthearted thriller about computers, cryptography, espionage, secrets, deception and betrayal. Robert Redford is the grungy group's guru, a middle-aged techno-anarchist on the lam from the Feds since college because of a computer prank. His merry band includes a goofy electronics specialist and conspiracy nut (Dan Aykroyd), a cheerful blind hacker (David Strathairn), a stern ex-CIA operative (Sidney Poitier), and a young and randy break-and-enter expert (River Phoenix). Their nemesis: an unbalanced computer genius (Ben Kingsley), the old college chum of Redford's who got caught for the prank and is now out to dominate all the world's 1's and 0's and to get even for being the one who went to jail. The gizmo everybody wants, which can decode any encrypted message, isn't a plausible invention, but it's for sure the perfect "McGuffin" (Alfred Hitchcock's word for any thingamajig upon which a plot hangs). SNEAKERS is lots of fun – I sneak a re-look about twice a year.

Cosmo (Ben Kingsley): The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.