Forgotten ? Perish the thought. I watched it in the theatres when it came out in Junior School. It, with Jurassic Park, is one of the reasons why I studied the sciences in University. It remains one of my favourite movies, and one of the first modern cyberpunk movies made. Glad you mentioned 'Cryptonomicon' , its one of the great classics of the genre.
*Tommy* Flowers (edited after being corrected), a seriously clever telephone systems engineer built the computer to his own design, even financing the construction himself when the government refused. Turing used it, After not being refunded for the money he spent He attempted to get a loan to build similar machines after the war but no bank would believe such a device was possible, since he was bound by the official secrets act to not discuss what his work had already achieved. Modifications were made, possibly due to requests made by Turing, but Turing was a theorist, not an engineer. Some of the machines, which he was never paid for ended up at GCHQ, some went to the US, but the government thought they had no commercial application, unlike their creater, leading to the UK being left decades behind yet again, as had happened with Babbage. I taught a lecture on this in a module at my last university. I admire what Turing acheived, but think Tommy should get the recognition he deserves.
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Tommy Flowers 22-12-1905 - 28-10-1998)
I googled the name but the result was Tommy Flowers. It appears from his history that he was a chief architect of modern computing. I'm sorry he didn't receive the recognition he deserved.
For me the most profound moment in Sneakers is when they are infiltrating a building with high tech security and encounter a bog standard mechanical combination lock and that completely blocks them.
Sneakers managed to make sitting in front of a computer a cinematic experience. It came out before the internet was a big thing, when technology was still special and more physical. It’s also really funny!
You said, "Mary McDonnell" and my brain started going through its IMDB records and when I got to the BSG page, you summed her career up in three words, "President Laura Roslin". And then the voice of Vader represents the NSA and you didn't mention that.
Thanks for reminding me of this prescient movie. Whether I knew it or not it has always been buried in the far nether-reaches of my consciousness, providing the paradigm for my responses to 2020's events.
"Real Hollywood movies with real Hollywood stars!" - Hear, hear! I for one have never forgotten it! Redford, Poitier, Kingsley in one movie! And then the light-hearted narrative style, the irony, the music, even the title: It fits all together. One of my favorite movies off all time. And it had a real message, too. Hollywood has forgotten a lot since then.
You drew the comparison between Redford and Brad Pitt. Now I'm thinking about Burn After Reading. "Osbourne Cox? I thought you might be worried... about the security... of your shit."
I saw this in theaters and was like "Whoa, you can DO this?!" No offense to HACKERS but it hijacked the path that WARGAMES and SNEAKERS paved for it. And now even HACKERS is even remembered for its 90s nostalgia instead of cultural impact. The only problem is that the ending doesn't work anymore because we know too much about how the Intelligence Community does things.
I'm glad we have such benevolent companies. And we all know that someone at McDonald's turned in Luigi Mangione and it wasn't the NSA using Israeli technology for Rapid facial recognition that caught him. Glad that is settled.
I loved that movie. I've seen it like 3x. Its charm is due to the relationship between Redford and Kingsley or more accurately, their shared desire to make a better world. I loved those scenes where they followed a logical progression of a premise to a natural conclusion. In large part because of this movie, I always know the ineptitude and irrationality of power hungry human beings from ever having complete success. History is a testament of it.
This movie was criminally underated. Seems like it got lost amongst all the MI movies & the Bourne movies. When if it didn't have earth quaking explosions it didn't get seen. One of my writing exercises I've held onto is taking movies I liked & update,twist & change. In my 'Batman' even Bruce doesn't know he's the Batman until injuries,clues & nightmares fill him in. A true split personality fueled by opiates for the injuries he mysteriously wakes up with. For screenwriter out there i highly recommend the excercise. You never know. Hold onto those stories as who knows where they may go!
I'd forgotten the cast that was in this film. Still it's amazing how many huge films in their time are practically forgotten by this generation. Especially Redford's films.
Forgotten my ass, as soon as the I saw the title and thumbnail my brain said “Sneakers?!” Nice to see it was right, that film has so many good lines in it.
And we can see the damned landers from Earth with telescopes right now. The Lunar landings were not faked and there is proof. Yeesh. I mean I watched them, my mom got me up at oh-dark-thirty to watch the very last one, so yeah miss me with that Moon Landing Hoax; it is the most provably false conspiracy theory ever. And most conspiracy theories are bunk perpetuated by insecure people who want to have an illusion of control in a world where they don’t have said control but are too insecure to admit life is a lot random ass stuff happening. Conspiracy theories are just copium for insecure middle class white people.
Feed a LLM a ton of encrypted data with the keys and its plain text until which time it starts to classify that actual snow-of-noise that comprises the transitional between one state and the other of being encrypted.
Don’t think I’ve seen _Sneakers_ so don’t know the ultimate fate of the hackers, but first hand testimony that it is physically possible would seriously erode the likelihood of their continued existence
A re-watch coming right up me thinks. Strangely poignant after watching Ed Zitron lambasting AI hubris & the possibility of "peak tec & why everything is getting $hitter" {Zardoz Tabernacle im looking at you}. ps David Strathairn deserves to be in that line up, his Space pirate Belter was legend
In 1947 when communist government took over Romania, the agents of former secret service who worked for the king, started to work for communist to keep their lives,their jobs and confort. It matters who is ruling the government, secret services are another branch of government.
There is a movie on Amazon years ago, may still be don't know, unique premise: P v NP math problem. Only movie on that math problem. Sorry i do not recall the title, but if ya like that movie you'll enjoy the other.
Given the state of the Middle East, Ukraine and the U.K., I’d deduce the Five Eyes security establishment is not working in the best interests of its people! Thanks for the video.
you've been out of the loop for a while. quantum computing does work, we've been doing it for a while. It's just that, right now, we don't compute much useful stuff with it.
@@easymentalityit's a forgotten movie for a reason. Poorly paced, unoriginal story, waste a number good actors. Just another conspiracy theory movie to go into the bucket of so many others. Sadly the plot device was great and could have been used to tell a much better story. Like "what happens when secrets can't be kept any longer?"
saw this on release, and felt as a comedy it was flat, and as a thriller with a message it was kind of weak. Never on the River Phoenix fan boat, so ...meh. And felt Mister Sidney Poitier to be wasted (yes, he and Ackroyd presented the best bits) and was hoping he got a well-earned payday. Redford? He actually fit. A time-filler for him. Great movies before, certain to be great movies later. Pay for some Sundance Festival promotions. Gandhi ...for chrissakes... killing time in a weak caper movie. though honestly, years later, this movie has passed from comic misfire into something far worse- actual relevance ahead of it's time. still not a great movie, but better than I remembered it as being
Forgotten ? Perish the thought. I watched it in the theatres when it came out in Junior School. It, with Jurassic Park, is one of the reasons why I studied the sciences in University. It remains one of my favourite movies, and one of the first modern cyberpunk movies made.
Glad you mentioned 'Cryptonomicon' , its one of the great classics of the genre.
Me Too, I remember it WELL
'Sneakers' has always been one of my favorite movies of all time. I've watched it more times than i can count, and i never get bored of watching it.
*Tommy* Flowers (edited after being corrected), a seriously clever telephone systems engineer built the computer to his own design, even financing the construction himself when the government refused. Turing used it, After not being refunded for the money he spent He attempted to get a loan to build similar machines after the war but no bank would believe such a device was possible, since he was bound by the official secrets act to not discuss what his work had already achieved. Modifications were made, possibly due to requests made by Turing, but Turing was a theorist, not an engineer.
Some of the machines, which he was never paid for ended up at GCHQ, some went to the US, but the government thought they had no commercial application, unlike their creater, leading to the UK being left decades behind yet again, as had happened with Babbage.
I taught a lecture on this in a module at my last university. I admire what Turing acheived, but think Tommy should get the recognition he deserves.
"some went to the U.S...
You can probably write an entire degree on this little ditto..
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Tommy Flowers 22-12-1905 - 28-10-1998)
I googled the name but the result was Tommy Flowers. It appears from his history that he was a chief architect of modern computing. I'm sorry he didn't receive the recognition he deserved.
@@gerardojg Tommy, yes, sorry. I don't know why I kept thinking it was Ernie. I did while I was writing my lecture too.
@@careypridgeonyou left Ernie in at the end.
For me the most profound moment in Sneakers is when they are infiltrating a building with high tech security and encounter a bog standard mechanical combination lock and that completely blocks them.
yeah, there was no LPL back then
If I recall correctly, they get past it by kicking the door.
@ That’s right. Good ol’ brute force attack.
@@gedbyrne8482 As Isaac Arthur says from his army days "If brute force isnt working...your using not enough of it"🤣🤣
thats what makes lockpicking lawyer so scary
he would probably just slap it open
“Organized crime?”
“Don’t kid yourself. It’s not that organized.”
Cattle mutilations are up.
Sneakers managed to make sitting in front of a computer a cinematic experience. It came out before the internet was a big thing, when technology was still special and more physical. It’s also really funny!
You must not have been raised in the Silicon Valley, where, as a kid, technology was everywhere, in schools, online travel agencies, job openings etc.
Always loved this film, will need to dust off the DVD. Great script, great plot, great acting with a real message about the future of data.
Sitting on your Cray is such a power move.
You said, "Mary McDonnell" and my brain started going through its IMDB records and when I got to the BSG page, you summed her career up in three words, "President Laura Roslin".
And then the voice of Vader represents the NSA and you didn't mention that.
She was also First Lady Whitmore
"My voice is my passport". One of my favorite movies!
Please verify me.
@scwotz 😂😂😂
“Marty, I can’t kill my friend…you, kill my friend.”
Yeah, once you’re trying to kill me, we ain’t friends anymore.
This has been a favorite of mine for over 30 years. There aren't many hacker films at this level.
Never heard of this movie, I'll check it out!
one of my favorite movies. there are only so many hacker movies and this is one of the best
Thanks for reminding me of this prescient movie. Whether I knew it or not it has always been buried in the far nether-reaches of my consciousness, providing the paradigm for my responses to 2020's events.
"Real Hollywood movies with real Hollywood stars!" - Hear, hear! I for one have never forgotten it! Redford, Poitier, Kingsley in one movie! And then the light-hearted narrative style, the irony, the music, even the title: It fits all together. One of my favorite movies off all time. And it had a real message, too. Hollywood has forgotten a lot since then.
I think we are seeing the corporate greed part of Hollyweird running the writing room and not just the best ideas!
@@MR-co2ti Well, that's the more blunt reasoning, yes.
One of the few movies I can watch with my parents. A true classic.
"Hey Abby, c'mon now, the FBI would give him twins."
One of my favourite cosy movies.
6:10 - Cray XMP in the background!
I watched this again last week after not having watched in 20ish years, and it still holds up sooooo well
You drew the comparison between Redford and Brad Pitt. Now I'm thinking about Burn After Reading. "Osbourne Cox? I thought you might be worried... about the security... of your shit."
I've watched this movie dozens of times. Love it.
I saw this in theaters and was like "Whoa, you can DO this?!"
No offense to HACKERS but it hijacked the path that WARGAMES and SNEAKERS paved for it. And now even HACKERS is even remembered for its 90s nostalgia instead of cultural impact. The only problem is that the ending doesn't work anymore because we know too much about how the Intelligence Community does things.
Nope I absolutely remember "Sneakers"
I'm glad we have such benevolent companies. And we all know that someone at McDonald's turned in Luigi Mangione and it wasn't the NSA using Israeli technology for Rapid facial recognition that caught him. Glad that is settled.
That's what they want you to think. 😂
It's possible you might be the first channel to do a full episode on Sneakers! I loved it ever since I saw it on Video.
I loved that movie. I still have the DVD.
I loved that movie. I've seen it like 3x. Its charm is due to the relationship between Redford and Kingsley or more accurately, their shared desire to make a better world. I loved those scenes where they followed a logical progression of a premise to a natural conclusion. In large part because of this movie, I always know the ineptitude and irrationality of power hungry human beings from ever having complete success. History is a testament of it.
This movie was criminally underated. Seems like it got lost amongst all the MI movies & the Bourne movies. When if it didn't have earth quaking explosions it didn't get seen. One of my writing exercises I've held onto is taking movies I liked & update,twist & change. In my 'Batman' even Bruce doesn't know he's the Batman until injuries,clues & nightmares fill him in. A true split personality fueled by opiates for the injuries he mysteriously wakes up with. For screenwriter out there i highly recommend the excercise. You never know. Hold onto those stories as who knows where they may go!
Excellent analysis, and a great movie.
Is this the one with the blind guy in the trunk?
Well, Robert Redford gets put in the trunk but the blind guy helps him figure out where he went with sound effects.
They went to a "cocktail party"
I'd forgotten the cast that was in this film. Still it's amazing how many huge films in their time are practically forgotten by this generation. Especially Redford's films.
Don't think I've seen this so will come back to your video after I've watched it. Sounds very interesting.
Forgotten my ass, as soon as the I saw the title and thumbnail my brain said “Sneakers?!” Nice to see it was right, that film has so many good lines in it.
And we can see the damned landers from Earth with telescopes right now. The Lunar landings were not faked and there is proof. Yeesh. I mean I watched them, my mom got me up at oh-dark-thirty to watch the very last one, so yeah miss me with that Moon Landing Hoax; it is the most provably false conspiracy theory ever.
And most conspiracy theories are bunk perpetuated by insecure people who want to have an illusion of control in a world where they don’t have said control but are too insecure to admit life is a lot random ass stuff happening. Conspiracy theories are just copium for insecure middle class white people.
great video. you provide really good context for those of us who didnt grow up back then
I want a Winnebago. And peace on earth.
I just want a phone number.
This is a GREAT movie.
I love this movie!
I've seen it a dozen times already.
My favorite line is:
"I cannot kill my friend." (turns to henchman) "Kill my friend."
Thanks for the name of sneakers. I didn't understand it for yrs & watched it several times. I need to see it again in 2024
aykroyd wasnt acting
"Maurice Bishop" was the pseudonym David Atlee Phillips used for himself when meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald.
I'm a simple man. I see a video on Sneakers, I watch it.
Love that movie.
The first time I heard about quantum computers was with William Gibson's Sprawl saga in the 80's
Whenever anyone asks me what i want, i always say "peace on Earth, and good will towards men".
Saved the best comment to the end 'Saying the quiet BIT out loud' :)
Great movie, it also made me a fan of the dish Migas, two thumbs up.
Did you ever apply your insights to the modern battlestar galactic a?
thanks for reminding me about this cool moie
Feed a LLM a ton of encrypted data with the keys and its plain text until which time it starts to classify that actual snow-of-noise that comprises the transitional between one state and the other of being encrypted.
This is a great movie! I remember going to the theatre to watch it.
8:07 - completely misses that the “spectre” quote is a riff on Marx and Engels…
why would you assume that was "missed"?
Saw it in the movies back in. The day, we loved it, we all tried to be hackers with our Amiga 1200's lol
Sydney Poitier is the 🐐
One of my favourite movies next to War Games. Whistler reminds me of Joe Engressia, aka the godfather of phreaking.
Are you in Bali?
Wasn’t forgotten by me! I heist comedy with a light tone but deeper ideas. It’s a lot of fun.
Isn't this about the time Redford did The Hot Rock with Zero Mostel?
If im depressed when my latest hiest has gone wrong for lack of bogroll, i just remember The Hot Rock & count my blessings🤣🤣
Never forget that the dude who invented PGP was imprisoned for creating an encryption algorithm the US government couldn't hack.
Don’t think I’ve seen _Sneakers_ so don’t know the ultimate fate of the hackers, but first hand testimony that it is physically possible would seriously erode the likelihood of their continued existence
You should watch it when you get a chance.
Reflexive modernization - risk society - Beck - 1986
Insightful
sneakers is part of every hacker canon, and id say a lot of comp sci
SIR Ben Kingsley, he'll have you know!
Did you say at @10:00 that we're secure if security agencies have completed access to all information? Lol.
I always confuse it with "Sleepers".
Ned Ryerson?
A re-watch coming right up me thinks. Strangely poignant after watching Ed Zitron lambasting AI hubris & the possibility of "peak tec & why everything is getting $hitter" {Zardoz Tabernacle im looking at you}.
ps David Strathairn deserves to be in that line up, his Space pirate Belter was legend
I saw it but honestly don’t remember much except it getting mid reviews at the time.
In 1947 when communist government took over Romania, the agents of former secret service who worked for the king, started to work for communist to keep their lives,their jobs and confort. It matters who is ruling the government, secret services are another branch of government.
legendary overdose?
One reviewer I heard say, "It would have been a great movie except for that last part about bankrupting the Republican party..."
These fed boi’s are getting out of control
There is a movie on Amazon years ago, may still be don't know, unique premise: P v NP math problem. Only movie on that math problem. Sorry i do not recall the title, but if ya like that movie you'll enjoy the other.
Given the state of the Middle East, Ukraine and the U.K., I’d deduce the Five Eyes security establishment is not working in the best interests of its people! Thanks for the video.
Before I see the movie: I hope the secret is "quantum computing doesn't work" (which is not a secret anymore) otherwise I would be highly dissapointed
you've been out of the loop for a while. quantum computing does work, we've been doing it for a while. It's just that, right now, we don't compute much useful stuff with it.
@@wernerviehhauser94Maybe that's what he means? That it's not living up to its promise despite decades of hype?
Google just released a quantum chip
There are people with good taste in films and then there are people that liked field of dreams.
The only time I've ever fallen asleep in a theater was watching that movie.
💯 agree…I’ve managed to *never* see Field of Dreams and never want to.
I want peace on Earth and good will towards men.
I'LL SEE WHAT I CAN DO!
you mean classic? lmao
🌊🌊🏄♀️🏄♂️
Maybe a more relative topic is agentic AI models (Google's Gemini 2.0 etc) after the previous generative models.
Its forgotten because it was a terrible movie. But a good choice for the point of this video essay.
BOOOOOO
Just because you have shit taste in movies doesn't make a movie you don't like terrible.
@@easymentalityit's a forgotten movie for a reason. Poorly paced, unoriginal story, waste a number good actors. Just another conspiracy theory movie to go into the bucket of so many others. Sadly the plot device was great and could have been used to tell a much better story. Like "what happens when secrets can't be kept any longer?"
wargames
I haven’t forgotten it.
saw this on release, and felt as a comedy it was flat, and as a thriller with a message it was kind of weak. Never on the River Phoenix fan boat, so ...meh. And felt Mister Sidney Poitier to be wasted (yes, he and Ackroyd presented the best bits) and was hoping he got a well-earned payday. Redford? He actually fit. A time-filler for him. Great movies before, certain to be great movies later. Pay for some Sundance Festival promotions. Gandhi ...for chrissakes... killing time in a weak caper movie.
though honestly, years later, this movie has passed from comic misfire into something far worse- actual relevance ahead of it's time. still not a great movie, but better than I remembered it as being