Sneakers is a 1992 American caper thriller film directed by Phil Alden Robinson from a screenplay co-written with Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker.

It stars Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier and David Strathairn.

In the film, Martin (Redford) and his group of security specialists are hired to steal a black box but soon realize the job has nefarious and far-reaching consequences.

[2][3] In 1969, student hackers and long-time friends Martin Brice and Cosmo use their skills to reallocate money from causes they consider evil to noble but underfunded causes designed to help the world.

Decades later, in San Francisco, Martin, using the alias Martin Bishop, heads a penetration testing security specialist team that includes former CIA operative Donald Crease, technician and conspiracy theorist Darren "Mother" Roskow, hacking prodigy Carl Arbogast, and blind phone phreak Irwin "Whistler" Emery.

The men are aware of Martin's true identity and offer to clear his name and pay him $175,000 to recover a Russian-funded black box device codenamed "Setec Astronomy" from mathematician Gunter Janek.

Although the box could infiltrate their illegal networks, Cosmo wants it so he can finish what he and Martin started in 1969, destroying financial and ownership records to render the rich and poor as equals.

To ensure their silence on the matter, Abbott acquiesces to the team's demands, including clearing Martin's record, sending Crease on a long holiday with his wife, buying Mother a Winnebago, and giving Carl the telephone number of an attractive NSA agent.

A news report announces the sudden bankruptcy of the Republican National Committee and the simultaneous receipt of large anonymous donations to Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the United Negro College Fund.

[4] At one point during the project, Robinson received a visit from men claiming to be representatives of the Office of Naval Intelligence, who indicated that for reasons of national security, the film could not include any references to "a hand-held device that can decode codes".

The character "Whistler" was based on Josef "Joybubbles" Engressia and John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper, well-known figures in the phone phreaks and hacking communities.

[7] Dan Ackroyd's brother Peter supplied conspiracy material on "UFOS, cattle mutilations, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the staged moon landing, JFK, [and] Marilyn Monroe" that was used to "spice up" his character.

[7] The opening scene was shot at the "Courthouse Square" set on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot, better known as "Hill Valley" in the Back to the Future films.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan called Sneakers "[a] caper movie with a most pleasant sense of humor," a "twisting plot," and a "witty, hang-loose tone."

Turan went on to praise the ensemble cast and director Robinson, who is "surprisingly adept at creating tension at appropriate moments" and "makes good use of the script's air of clever cheerfulness".

[12] Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, was less impressed, giving the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a sometimes entertaining movie, but thin."

[13] Conversely, Vincent Canby, in a negative review for The New York Times, said the film looked like it had "just surfaced after being buried alive for 20 years," calling it "an atrophied version of a kind of caper movie that was so beloved in the early 1970's".