SNEAKERS is remarkable for its fidelity to the ethos of the computerunderground. It's something of a love-note to the 2600 crowd (whoseem properly appreciative). System-cracker practices like trashing,canning, and social-engineering are faithfully portrayed. And whileSNEAKERS is remarkably paranoid, that too rather suits its own milieu,because many underground hackers are in fact remarkably paranoid,especially about the NSA, other techie feds, and their fellow hackers.

Hacking complex computer systems from the outside -- maintaining atoehold within machinery that doesn't belong to you and is not obedientto your own purposes -- tends by its nature to lead to a ratherfragmentary understanding. This fragmentary knowledge, combined withguilty fear, is a perfect psychological breeding-ground for a deeplyparanoid outlook. Knowledge underground takes the form of a hipster'sargot, rules of thumb, and superstitious ritual, combined with largeamounts of practised deceit. And that's the way the SNEAKERS castbasically spend their lives: in pretense and deception, profoundlydisenchanted and utterly disenfranchised. Basically, not one personamong them can be trusted with a burnt-out match. Even their"robberies" are fakes; they lie even to one another, and they risktheir lives, and other people's, for peanuts.

SNEAKERS, in which anagrams play a large thematic role, is itself ananagram for NSA REEKS. The National Security Agency is the largesttarget for the vaguely-leftist, antiauthoritarian paranoia expressed bythe film. The film's sinister McGuffin is an NSA-built super-decryptordevice. (This super-decryptor is a somewhat silly gimmick, but thatshouldn't be allowed to spoil the story. Real cryptography enthusiastswill probably be too busy laughing at the decryptor's mad-geniusinventor, a raunchy parody of real-life cryptographer WhitfieldDiffie.) The IRS, though never mentioned overtly, also comes in forsome tangential attack, since the phone number of one of the IRS'sCalifornia offices is given out verbally during the film by anattractive young woman, who claims that it's her home phone number.This deliberate bit of mischief must have guaranteed the IRS a lot ofeager phone-phreak action.

Every conspiracy must have a Them. In the black-and-white world ofILLUMINATI, all forms of opposition to Goodness must be cut from thesame Satanic cloth, so that Aleister Crowley, Vladimir Lenin and DavidRockefeller are all of one warp and woof. SNEAKERS, by contrast, isslightly more advanced, and features two distinct species of Them.The first Them is the Hippie-Sold-Out Them, a goofy role gamely playedby Ben Kingsley as a Darkside Yuppie Hacker Mafioso, a kind ofcarnivorous forty-something Bill Gates. The second species of Them isthe enonymously reeking NSA, the American shadow-spook elite,surprisingly personified by a patriarchal James Earl Jones in an oddlycomic and comforting Wizard of Oz-like cameo.

Both these Thems are successfully fooled by the clever Sneakers in bitsof Hollywood business that basically wouldn't deceive a brightfive-year-old, much less the world's foremost technical espionageagency and a security-mad criminal zillionaire.

But these plot flaws are no real objection. A more genuine objectionwould be the entire tenor of the film. The film basically accomplishesnothing. Nothing actually happens. No one has to change their mindabout anything. At the end, the Hacker Mafioso is left at large, stillin power, still psychotic, and still in command of huge sums and vastarchives of illicit knowledge and skill. The NSA, distributing a fewcheap bribes, simply swears everybody to secrecy, and retreats safelyback into the utter undisturbed silence of its Cold War netherworld. Afew large issues are raised tangentially, but absolutely nothing isdone about them, and no moral judgements or decisions are made. Thefrenetic plotting of the Sneaker team accomplishes nothing whatsoeverbeyond a maintenance of the status quo and the winning of a few toysfor the personnel. Redford doesn't even win the token girl. It seemsmuch ado about desperately little.

Then, at the very end, our hero robs the Republican Party of all itsmoney through computer-fraud, and distributes it to worthy left-wingcauses. Here something has actually happened at last, but it's adismal and stupid thing. It's profoundly undemocratic, elitist, andhateful act; only a political idiot could imagine that a crime of thisnature would do a minute's worth of real good. And even thispsychotic provocation has the look of a last-minute tag-on to themovie; in the book, it doesn't even occur.

The film makes two stabs at Big Message. There's a deliberate andmuch-emphasized Lecture at the Foot of the Cray, where the evilDarkside Hacker explains in slow and careful capital letters that theworld in the 90s has become an Information Society and has thus becomevulnerable to new and suspiciously invisible forms of manipulation.Beyond a momentary spasm of purely intellectual interest, though, ourhero's basic response is a simple "I know. And I don't care." Thissurprisingly sensible remark much deflates the impact of thesuperhacker-paranoia scenario.

The second Big Message occurs during a ridiculously convenientescape-scene in which our hero defies the Darkside Hacker to kill himface-to-face. The bad-guy, forced to look deep inside his owntortured soul, can't endure the moral responsibility involved inpulling a trigger personally. The clear implication is that sooner orlater somebody has to take a definite and personal responsibility forall this abstract technologized evil. Unfortunately this is sheerromantic hippie nonsense; even Adolf Eichmann has it figured that itwas all somebody else's fault. The twentieth century's big-time evilsconsisted of people pushing papers in a distant office causing otherpeople to die miles away at the hands of dazed functionaries.Tomorrow's button-pushers are likely to be more remote and insulatedthan ever; they're not going to be worrying much about their cop-outsand their karma.

SNEAKERS plays paranoia for slapstick laughs in the character of DanAykroyd, who utters a wide variety of the standard Space-Brother nuttynotions, none of them with any practical implications whatsoever.This may be the worst and most discouraging aspect of theconspiratorial mindset -- the way it simultaneously flatters one's ownimportance and also makes one willing to do nothing practical andtangible. The conspiracy theorist has got it all figured, he's gotthe inside angles, and yet he has the perfect excuse for utter cynicaltorpor.

Let's just consider the real-world implications of genuineconspiratorial convictions for a moment. Let's assume, as many peopledo, that John Kennedy really was shot dead in a 'silent coup' by a USgovernment cabal in 1963. If this is true, then we Americans clearlyhaven't run our own national affairs for at least thirty years. Ourexecutive, our Congress, our police and our bureaucracies have all beena fraud in the hands of elite and murderous secret masters. But ifwe're not running our own affairs today, and haven't for thirty years,then how the heck are we supposed to start now? Why even try? If theworld's fate is ineluctably in the hands of Illuminati, then what realreason do we have to meddle in public matters? Why make our thoughtsand ideas heard? Why organize, why discuss public policy, why makebudgets, why set priorities, why vote? We'll just get gypped anyhow.We'd all be better off retired, in hiding, underground, in monasteries,in purdah, or dead.

If the NSA's tapping every phone line and reading every license-platefrom orbit, then They are basically omniscient. They're watching usevery moment -- but why do they bother? What quality, besides our ownvanity, would make us important enough to be constantly watched bySecret Masters? After all, it's not like we're actually intending to*accomplish* anything.