This week in Physical Specimens, our regular round-up of new physical media and 4K reviews, we assess new 4K UHD releases of a charmingly quaint techno thriller from 1992, an all-time classic from Kenji Mizoguchi, and a John Ford tough guy comedy that’s probably one of your grandpa’s favorite movies.
Sneakers
Sneakers is a charming throwback in more ways than one. It’s a movie about hacking and computer mischief made before the whole world was digitally connected within our pockets, and before it became almost impossible to do anything in public without being watched by a voracious surveillance state. It realized that conspiracy theories were fun and funny before they completely took over real life. It’s also the kind of star-driven, adult-oriented, competent Hollywood production that rarely makes it to theaters anymore—a comic thriller starring two of the biggest names of their day (Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier) that isn’t based on IP, doesn’t devolve into unrealistic and over-the-top action, and isn’t bogged down with CGI and special effects. This is what Hollywood used to be like: a proficient delivery system for light entertainment that doesn’t always assume its audience is functionally brainless. Sure, most of those movies were mediocre or worse, but there were more of them with more variety than what we see in theaters today. And often this system would crank out something genuinely entertaining—like Sneakers.
Redford plays a computer genius and unreformed ‘60s campus radical who runs a white hat IT security firm in the early ‘90s, during that period when personal computers had become mandatory office tech and a part of everyday life, but before the internet was a mainstream utility. His oddball team of hackers, tech geniuses, and surveillance experts—Poitier as a former CIA agent, Dan Aykroyd as a conspiracy theorist, David Strathairn as a blind phone phreak, River Phoenix as… uh… a young guy—help companies find exploitable weaknesses in their IT systems, while Redford hides one huge exploitable weakness of his own: he’s living under a fake name after a hacking prank in college over 20 years earlier put his friend in jail and made Redford a wanted man. So when two NSA agents show up with a huge money offer for a type of job Redford’s team would usually pass on, along with proof that they know Redford’s real name, he pretty much has no choice but to take the job. The result is a slick, snappy, deeply likable thriller featuring some of the most advanced technology of 1991. That great core cast is joined by Mary McDonnell as Redford’s unflappable on-and-off girlfriend, Ben Kingsley as the heavy, a young Donal Logue with long hair and bad German accent, and a cameo by a heavy hitter who starred in the director’s previous movie Field of Dreams.
If you aren’t old enough to remember 1992, the relatively limited scope of Sneakers’ technological paranoia might seem beyond quaint. Everybody still has a landline, cameras aren’t on every door, nobody has constant access to the internet, a wanted man could prominently thrive in an uncrowded field for over two decades before anybody figured out his real identity, there’s no comprehensive surveillance database with facial scans that’s easily accessible to the government and corporations alike, and the tech sector hasn’t yet become the death knell for society as we know it. There’s also a short, direct line from the paranoid world of Sneakers to the tech dystopia that’s slowly grown over the last several decades, which makes the movie feel a little bittersweet: remember when the giants of Silicon Valley were dweeby computer nerds with a whiff of ‘60s counterculture about them, and not real-life supervillains intent on disrupting every single institution our world is built on? Even Kingsley’s bad guy looks more like a saint than a heel compared to the tech moguls of today.
Sneakers isn’t great. It relies a little too much on cliches and narrative shortcuts, it’s not really interested in the ethics of hacking and surveillance or boomer betrayal of ‘60s idealism, a segment with McDonnell’s character seducing a nebbishy employee of Kingsley’s through computer dating goes on too long (even if Stephen Tobolowsky is reliably great as the nerd), and although it doesn’t turn into John Wick or a Marvel-style laser-fist battle, the last half-hour or so is too busy and too implausible. It’s the kind of movie that has a montage of its characters dancing goofily to a ‘60s pop song—which might be the most ‘90s thing about it. Still, the cast is top notch, the script is tight until the conclusion, the humor is often actually funny, and it doesn’t insult or pander to the viewer. It’s a fun, fascinating snapshot from a crucial moment in our technological history, and a reminder that Hollywood didn’t always only make movies for kids and teenagers.
Sneakers
Original Release: 1992
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Format: 4K UHD Blu-ray
Label: Kino Lorber
Release Date: April 22, 2025
