Sneakers Remains Robert Redford’s Most Underrated Performance

With news of his death at the age of 89, Robert Redford will be remembered as a beloved actor from the New Hollywood era. While obituaries will be correct in discussing his stunning screen presence, commitment to interesting roles, and contributions to independent cinema, they may overlook a surprising and oft-forgotten fact about Redford: he was not always respected as an actor. Audiences of the ’60s and ’70s dismissed him as too handsome, a position often taken by the famously acerbic and influential critic Pauline Kael.

Today, we recognize Redford as classical movie star who knew how to use his glowing on-screen persona to create compelling characters. His work alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting is heralded as an exemplar of the late-’60s style and his paranoid thrillers All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor use his charm to add texture to the tension. Heck, even the part that most younger audiences know—no, not playing a HYDRA agent in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but the gif of him nodding in approval in 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson—demonstrates his ability to command the screen.

Yet, throughout this career reassessment, one of his best performances goes overlooked. That performance occurs in the 1992 thriller Sneakers, in which Redford shines within an ensemble cast of oddballs.

A Charming Sneak

After a cold open showing how activist hacker Martin Brice (portrayed by Twin Peaks‘s Gary Hershberger in the past) was nearly captured by police in 1969, Sneakers begins with a group of professional thieves pulling off a bank heist. The sequence serves to establish the quirky main players: a tightly-wound former CIA agent (Sidney Poitier), a blind telecommunications specialist (David Strathairn), a young and idealistic hacker (River Phoenix), and a conspiracy minded technician (Dan Aykroyd). The heist ends with Martin, older and now calling himself Martin Bishop (Redford), transferring a large sum of money into his account.

The payoff to the sequence demonstrates Redford’s skills as an actor. After the heist is finished, director Phil Alden Robinson—who gets a co-writing credit with producers Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes—cuts to the next morning, where Bishop is closing his account at the bank, receiving in cash the massive amount he transferred. In a single, unbroken shot, we watch as Martin accepts the bills, walks past a security guard and up to a board room, where he returns the money to waiting executives and provides an assessment on the institution’s security protocols.

As a secretary in the next scene puts it, as she fills out a check as legal payment for Martin’s services, “People hire you to break into their places… to make sure no one can break into their places?”

The magic of the scene comes with the slightly embarrassed shrug that Redford pulls when Martin answers, “It’s a living.” Up until that point, Redford has played Martin as calm and collected. Where all of the other members of his team are either prattling on about secret assassinations or letting their nerves overtake them, Martin is even keeled and cool. He betrays nothing when he tells a teller inquiring about his decision to close his account that he “just doesn’t feel safe” with that bank, and he remains confident in in his appeal when he demands payment before providing further analysis.

Yet, when the secretary draws attention to the ridiculous nature of his job, and when she makes a crack about how little he gets paid, Martin gets shaken up a bit and Redford reveals that drop in confidence in his performance. He opens his mouth in rebuttal, as if he knows that someone so handsome and cool should have a come-back, but then walks away without saying anything, he’s jaw still slack.

In that moment, Redford shrugs off the romance of Martin as awesome ’90s hacker. Instead, Redford allows him to be a human.

Acting Human

Redford’s ability to mix Hollywood charisma with human vulnerability drives Sneakers. After its place setting opening, Sneakers follows Martin’s team as they’re coerced by what appear to be NSA agents into stealing a secret codebreaking device from a brilliant mathematician (Donal Logue, back when he could be cast against type). Along with help from Martin’s sometime girlfriend Liz (Mary McDonnell), the team attempts their goal by duping a gullible scientist (Stephen Tobolowsky), getting pulled further into post-Cold War intrigue and coming face-to-face with a surprising mastermind (Ben Kingsley).

At the time, some viewers complained that Sneakers failed to challenge Redford, that it just asked him to repeat beats from his ’70s paranoid movies. However, with two decades of age on him, Redford was even more equipped to balance his charisma with humanity. As thrillers of the era grew more slick, with big stakes and fancy technology—Enemy of the State, Mission: Impossible, The Long Kiss Goodnight—Redford’s ability to ground Bishop and his wacky pals made Sneakers stand out all the more.

Sneakers never stops insisting that Martin has remarkable hacking skills, that he’s fundamentally a good man against powerful forces. And Redford can embody those admirable traits. But throughout the film, Redford finds ways to keep Martin human: the way his shoulders slightly drop when Liz reminds Martin that he messed up her relationship, the tightening in his jaw as Martin waits to learn if his friends will take on a risky job that would clear his record, the slight lean back when Martin realizes the mastermind’s identity.

As Sneakers repeatedly shows, Robert Redford was a movie star, remarkably handsome and blessed with endless charisma. But by pairing him with oddball character actors and having him play a real person in a heightened story, Sneakers also proves that Redford was a proper actor, able to remain a human being, even when idolized on screen.