VDSNEAKR.RVW  931028
 
"Sneakers", Universal Pictures
 
In trying to come up with a computer film festival after "Colossus," "War
Games" and "Sneakers," we quickly ran out of ideas.  (The electronic
communications in "Jack Flash" were important, but not a major part of the
story.)  "Sneakers" received a lot of publicity on the net at its release, not
least because of the "technical advice" given to the movie by a famous hacker
and phone phreak.  (It is not for nothing that there are so many references to
"Captain Crunch" in the movie.  He took his nom-de-guerre from the discovery
that a prize whistle which came in boxes of the cereal gave out the 2600 hertz
tone which could be used to command older telephone switches.)  ("2600"
magazine also takes its name from this fact.  The tone, not the cereal.)
 
Falling generally into the thriller, rather than science fiction, genre,
"Sneakers" will not likely become either a cinematic or a cult classic.  While
not, perhaps, of the first rank, it should nonetheless hold a reasonably high
place in the second rank of recent movies.  (Readers are free, of course, to
consider this scant praise.)
 
Character development is scant, and social, as well as technical, absurdities
are present.  At one point the bad guys are tipped off by a supposed mismatch
in a couple purportedly assigned by a computer dating service: any normal human
would know that a meat market is a meat market, regardless of any hype over
computerization.  There are other places where the logical takes second place
to the visual.  Seminar speakers do *not* stand where the overhead can shine in
their eyes.  Teachers (particularly in the U.S.) do *not* have apartments out
of "Better Homes and Gardens."  Security guards do not pull random wires out of
security camera clusters.  Continuity could use some work, too.  At one point,
literally hundreds of armed guards pour out of the rhododendrons, enough to
fill all the corridors and stairways in the complex:  within five minutes the
heroes are able to run the length of the complex (and up the stairway where the
guard was so suspicious of the wiring) without seeing a soul.
 
(In counterpoint to some unutterably bleak scenes, most of the movie contains
wit and humour.  The negotiations between the hackers and the NSA are
hilarious.  Unrealistic, with three people facing you carrying machine guns,
but hilarious.)
 
In comparative terms the technical detail is fairly reasonable.  The story
hinges on the existence of a "universal" code breaker.  For existing encryption
and decryption techniques, it is known just how difficult it is to break a
given code.  However, as the inventor states in the movie, "What if there is
another way?"  We do not yet know enough about information to say that there is
*not* another way to extract the meaning from encrypted data.  (It is unlikely,
but not absolutely impossible.)  This does, however, preclude the reasoning in
the film that such a device would not be of use for different types of codes. 
Universal is universal.  (It would probably make for great translation
software, too ...)
 
The technical trappings of the movie, though, again suffer from the dictates of
the artistic director.  I actually do own an acoustic coupler modem, obtained
when I bought a computer for its historical value.  (I have no idea whether or
not it actually still works.)  A computer display at one point purports to show
the progress of a telephone call being traced:  it bears a striking resemblance
to the (equally unrealistic) "burning fuses" used to light off explosives in
other thrillers.  Decryption is unlikely to result in letters tumbling and
falling into place like slot machine wheels, and it is equally unlikely that
decrypted text suddenly becomes a graphical map.  (Then again, text versus
graphical representation *is* an aspect of meaning ... )  A Cray XMP-3 doesn't
run Windows (although it is probably the only platform that could give you that
kind of response time).
 
The composition of the "tiger team" is very realistic in that the diverse skill
sets would be very useful.  Getting them to work together is another matter. 
The prevalence of criminal records would seriously hamper their ability to get
contracts, but all indications in the movie are that they aren't exactly flush
anyway.  (The ubiquity of Chinese take-out food and the difficulty in finding a
girlfriend willing to play Mata Hari are also realistic.  As, interestingly, is
the association of mathematical and musical skill.)
 
"Sneakers" is by no means perfect, but it shows a welcome trend towards a more
realistic treatment of technology in popular entertainment.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993   VDSNEAKR.RVW  931028
 
(PS - we did eventually overcome the mental block on the movies. There are
lots.)

======================
roberts@decus.ca           rslade@vcn.bc.ca           rslade@vanisl.decus.ca
Why did the chicken cross the Moebius Strip? To get to the other.. um.. er..
Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER)