Sneakers (1992) review

Martin Bishop (Robert Redford), who runs a "security team" with the assistance of fired CIA case officer Donald Crease (Sidney Poitier), visually-impaired telecom hacker "Whistler" (David Strathairn), technician "Mother" (Dan Aykroyd) and prodigy Carl (River Phoenix) to test vulnerabilities of companies, gets approached by agents claiming to be from the National Security Agency who strongarm him into stealing a powerful "Black Box" device from mathematician Dr. Gunter Janek (Donal Logue) ... and then later on he reunites with former classmate-turned-supervillain Cosmo (Ben Kingsley).  It's a good thing director Robinson assembled a cast this loaded and charismatic (including Mary McDonnell as Redford's ex-girlfriend) to try to distract from the fact that the script is a mish-mosh of techno-jargon and protracted scenes with no zip to them ... although it isn't the easiest task to make a bunch of men staring at (now wildly outdated) code all that compelling (even though Sam Esmail did a commendable job with the TV show Mr. Robot).  To its credit, they did nab cryptographer Leonard Adleman as a consultant (he's one of the three inventors of RSA encryption) ... and it does foreshadow the NSA's PRISM program (that Edward Snowden leaked to the public).  "Too many secrets" ... that sounds about right.