A friend of mine that was in Desert Storm taught me this. Of course, he was on the other side
One of my favourites. Great cast.
Kingsley and Redford on the roof: "There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information"
They're not on the roof for that scene; they're in his office, using the computer room's air conditioning as a sound mask (and using a Cray Y-MP as a bench). While the movie takes some very early-90s liberties with technology (especially the scene where they use the chip), it's remarkably respectful of hacking -- there's a stronger emphasis on social engineering then the purely technical, and my "head canon" is that the chip itself is a quantum chip capable of breaking any then-known encryption.
I love the way you confidently relied on your 80s film trivia memory to correct someone online without double checking. Im not being sarcastic its kinda cool.
It's also remarkably respectful of Bay Area geography -- they got the major bridges right. None of that Dustin Hoffman going the wrong way on the Bay Bridge stuff.
(Also from fuzzy memory) Any then-known Western encryption. The chip was supposedly useless on Soviet/Russian encryption techniques, thus emphasizing who exactly the chip was meant to be used against.
Back when Social Engineering meant wearing a hell of a suit and dodging the 'Bunco Squad'. All the elements are there: Greed, Scarcity, a sense of urgency, all legitimised by the leveraging of Social "proof".
If it was remade today there'd be a good chance Redford would find Newman's character down on his luck running facebook ads for crypto scams featuring AI videos of prominent celebrities.
He more or less was everywhere when I was growing up in the 1970's. "The Sting", "All the President's Men", etc. "The Great Waldo Pepper" was often on T.V.
"Jeremiah Johnson" though is still a favorite of mine. Got me into blackpowder.
Thanks for the recommendation. If you want realistic, modern spy show, I strongly recommend “Le Bureau Des Legendes”. I heard there’s an American remake, which probably makes it over-the-top for their audience, but the original is top-tier TV.
Haven't rewatched since it was first released. As an audio person I was particularly impressed with a scene whereby someone who was locked in a trunk determined their location by remembering the sound made by bumps on a specific road. Is that right? Or am I thinking of the last time I was kidnapped?
Sneakers is one of the main factors that got me into computing from Mathematics. Cryptography was new to the main stream when this movie came out. RSA was big time. Spy Games, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and especially Jeremiah Johnson all bad ass.
Any time I'm visiting and am on the Embarcadero. It's funny watching it, you can still see workers in the background cleaning up the median which used to have a freeway over it from the '89 quake.
I first watched it back when it came out. At the time I was living in a different country and San Francisco was just another US city to me. I just happened to re-watch it yesterday (it still holds up) for the first time since moving to the bay area.
It was interesting hearing the names of the locations and bridges that previously meant nothing to me (except the golden gate).
I think it is one of the more realistic hacker movies. You can read also about Leonard Adleman's participation in the movie[1]. Adleman is the A in RSA.
Also, Lawrence (Larry) Lasker[2] was the writer of Sneakers AND War Games!
Not to mention one of the most ridiculously stacked casts — it's incredible how many greats are in it. And it's one of my favorite hacking movies of all time.
It’s also one of the few hacking movies that stands up - assume ‘the box’ is a prototype quantum computer. Better yet assume it has a production process with such a high failure rate they’ve been churning these out for years just to produce a single working instance.
just a few days ago I had an idea for a shirt and sent it to a designer on fiverr. I was very pleased with what I got back. "Secrets are Power" was my nod to one of my favorite movies Sneakers! Rest in Piece Mr. Redford.
http://bit.ly/3Ip3tr3 link to the shirt if you want to look at it. there is a message encoding in the background.
Oh no - we’ve lost a great defender of democracy and the environment. Throughout his personal life and professional film career, he consistently sought to spotlight government, corporate, and military-industrial corruption while shining a light on the importance of democracy. The world has lost a remarkable person!
Do yourself a favor and watch some of his most important movies that represented his ideology "Truth", "Brubaker", "Sneakers" or "Spy Game".
I do think this is one of Redford's very best films. A lot of detractors make the mistake of assuming the character is intended to represent an expert & experienced sailor, leading to a complete misread of the story. It is possible to be both clever & unwise.
I loved this very much, and I've seen it a couple of times. Together with "Touching the Void" it ranks high on my list of the best survival pictures ever made, a specific genre I enjoy very much.
And it's very intimate. 106 minutes of just you the viewer, and Robert Redford. I might just rewatch it tonight. It feels fitting.
I got into mountaineering (movies) after reading Into Thin Air, about the disaster atop Mount Everest in 1996. Haunting story, fantastic book.
For real life lost at sea stories, there’s “438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea” telling the story of fisherman Salvador Alvarenga that spent more than a year adrift in the Pacific Ocean.
my favorite performance of his! its a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. so many anxiety inducing moments, especially for those who fear the ocean
Redford's Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival was a monumental contribution, changing the film industry for the better, a boon to indie filmmakers. IMO this is Redford's most important legacy.
This is so essential now especially as Hollywood has become more consolidated and corporate.
Quentin Tarantino went through Sundance Lab while preparing Reservoir Dogs. There is some test footage of him and Steve Buscemy he shot there reciting some dialogue.
He also met Terry Gilliam there, and he always recounts this first meeting fondly, so the festival led him into meeting an important mentor.
Outside of Quentin, Paul Thomas Anderson, a lot of people are called the Sundance Generation. Sundance changed cinema.
It's sad to see a lot of his legacy get trampled by corporate profits and private interests in recent years. Once he sold Sundance resort in 2020 (known for being very quaint and respectful of the surrounding environment), it quickly got expanded, driven by profits rather than conservation.
Similar story with the Sundance Film Festival, which will be moving out of Utah (to Boulder, Colorado) for the first time ever in 2027. For many people, this move represents a major shift away from the original character of the festival.
I used to feel some sort of strange reassurance whenever I'd see him on screen, in any kind of film, in any kind of role.
Being an espionage lover, of course, Spy Game will have a special place; then there's him playing Sundance Kid, but I remember him for Out of Africa and The Way We Were. I know many might say, 'But he was not central in them'; I'd say that he was. And no, not the only central role. That's how I remember him and these films. What masterpieces of films, and how beautifully he played his roles in these; and the things he stood for.
His performance in Spy Game is really great — recently rewatched it. The way he captured so well the idea that younger generations think they've got it all figured out — but the old hats still have some tricks up their sleeve.
Unfortunately I feel that while it's very well shot and paced, the gendered interplay from RR and his co-star feels a little iffy in the modern day - particularly since the romantic sub-plot requires so much suspension of disbelief. So much so that the main characters in the Elmore Leonard spy-comedy "Out of Sight" ridicule it.
Apparently, as per Reddit, the director kept wanting her to look more scared in her initial scenes; explaining the horror of being kidnapped and imprisoned in her own home by a strange man. She kept pleading "But it's Robert Redford"!
If you like the espionage and unique feel of films of that era though, you can't do much better than Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation', starring a wonderfully morose Gene Hackman. A very worthy Palme D'Or winner in '74.
Fred Zinnemann's 'The Day of the Jackal' in '73 is also a high-point for espionage-thrillers of the decade.
Ordinary People, Redford's directorial debut, is one of my favourite movies. A movie that deceptively appears simple but that is wonderfully emotionally deep with great performances from the entire cast. I must give it a rewatch.
Purely in terms of watching great actors at work, I think the penultimate scene is more striking. It sets up the excellent scene you shared rather well, too.
They really don't make them like Robert Redford anymore — truly one of my favorite actors who could elevate anything he was in. 89 is an impressive run — especially given how sharp he was right up til the end.
If you've never seen his movies, you can basically pick them at random and you'll find a good one. But All the President's Men is one of my favorite films of all time.
War games, was one of the first Western movies appeared in USSR at time of "global discharge" (or better translation global easing), it was so fresh wind.
I have seen movies with Redford later, but unfortunately, I just now got info about connection of Redford with War games.
Any actor with even 10% of successful movies that Redford would be considered an "A" lister. Thanks for all the entertainment for 5 decades, Robert. RIP.
What a loss. Sneakers inspired me to pursue my dream of being a penetration tester.
I first discovered his acting via a long forgotten torrent site.
I used to go onto Suprnova[0] and sort by "most seeded" and alongside a sea of pornography, up filtered gems like the 1992 cult classes we all know and love. (As well as, at the time, a lot of really got big beat electronic albums, but the uhn tiss tiss is a conversation for another thread.)
I had been a big gamer growing up, but found that folks weren't growing out of toxicity, and migrated to being a film/tv geek. More art galleries, less LAN parties, that sort of thing.
I guess he's jammin' revolvers into Russian dude's backs at the opera in heaven now...
I haven't found another film that captures the feeling of blowing past building security, the front desk, and the CEO's secretary to inform them if you were the guy who'd been threatening their NGO, they'd be dead -- and oh, by the way, here's a list of the systems I could own without setting foot in your building.
Nowadays, you're weird if you socialize offline and eschew social media, but back in the day being a hacker was not considered cool or interesting -- if anything, we were scary.
Not just that, but the wholly plausible concept of "Redfordations" - a fictional U.S. law establishing reparations for descendants of racial injustices in the form of lifetime tax exemptions - seemed very on-brand for the man and his legacy.
The introduction to a river runs through it is an interesting read. I never realized how much creative influence Redford had over the production of the movie until I read it a few months ago.
Oh wow, last night I was just listening to his commentary on "All the President's Men" (which came up a couple of weeks ago here on HN when we were talking about ratfucking).
I know we live in an age where if someone dies, you cannot criticize him, but Redford is famous for the blackballing of James Woods. I vehemently disagree with Woods' politics but that shouldnt preclude him from employment. Its very clear people like Redform made sure people like Woods were targeted for their political and personal views. Redford was a huge Hollywood power, not just this 'kindly grandpa' actor but a power-player of the highest order. Redford ran a major film and television production company and as such decided, personally, who to hire or fire on his own whim.
Robert Redford is also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, so getting on his bad-side is strongly career-effecting. People lived in fear of getting on this guy's bad side.
On set, he sounds like the typical Hollywood nightmare with famous clashes with his costars and directors. Arthur Laurents, the writer of The Way We Were, described Redford as an "ego maniac" and control freak for his on-set behaviors.
I say this as a leftist, but "The Truth" is liberal catering-to, and whitewashes Rathers's
lack of due diligence in the Bush document, which even to a largely uniformed person like me thought, "Uh isnt that a modern font?" Dan Rather's rush to to this story is not a 'victim' but the failure of basic journalism. I dont think Rather should have resigned, but the idea that's he's this kind-hearted innocent, as the film mostly portrays him as, is just dishonesty. Rather saw money and fame in breaking a big story, and ran with it without much care.
Shrug, I've always seen his PR as very heavily manufactured and played towards the NYTimes and Variety and Sundance crowd in a very targeted way. And it worked, Redford died with an estate worth at least $200m. Capitalism gonna capitalism I guess, but the reality is Redford was quite the vindictive partisan who used his wealth and power against his perceived political enemies and whitewashed some questionable people.
What evidence is there that Redford blackballed James Woods? I know Woods claims he's been blacklisted, but is this true, and where is the evidence it was Redford?
The article also describes him as the kind of environmentalist who makes my eyes roll - a rich person principally concerned with making sure their local area looks untouched and beautiful so they can ride their Ferrari through it.
That's a good point. I have less criticism there because there is potential for someone like that to affect national or global policy and the individual can't often do much on a persona consumption level. Like I dont want to nitpick someone for driving a corvette or using paper cups. Its not like driving an SUV or running the dishwasher daily is so much better. If he lived a very modest life, would anything be different environmentally? Maybe slightly less carbon out there? The same way I dont think reusing straws is helping for me.
But the carbon footprint of the jetset crowd is significant and worth pointing out. And, yes, how a lot of it is things like protecting wealthy-coded wildlife touristy-type areas in California and such and less effort in cleaning up factories in Alabama or India and such. Or how as a capital owning class person, he negotiated against the working class with his productions, and as such the dynamics that make Alabama and India poor, the capitalistic effect of driving down wages and the political power of these working people who want reform, well, he's part of the problem there too. He can't be both 'the boss' and a worker at the same time.
And the zero effort for him and his cohorts to fly first class instead of private jet or take a regular boat and not a mega yacht or other massive carbon producers.
But his behavior on set, his bias in "The Truth,' and his hiring policies are entirely his choice and can be made nearly entirely meritorious. He simply decided to not act meritorious.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/
One of my favourites. Great cast.
Kingsley and Redford on the roof: "There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
For me the biggest Hollywood liberty taken is the beautiful ASCII Colourized UIs for federal agencies and ATC that they reveal with the decrypt!
(Also from fuzzy memory) Any then-known Western encryption. The chip was supposedly useless on Soviet/Russian encryption techniques, thus emphasizing who exactly the chip was meant to be used against.
This is one of my favorite things about the movie, and why I always recommended it to my security friends.
The Old Man and the Gun
… another great film by Redford, about an elderly man who leans on his charisma and confidence to rob banks. Based on a true story.
Back when Social Engineering meant wearing a hell of a suit and dodging the 'Bunco Squad'. All the elements are there: Greed, Scarcity, a sense of urgency, all legitimised by the leveraging of Social "proof".
If it was remade today there'd be a good chance Redford would find Newman's character down on his luck running facebook ads for crypto scams featuring AI videos of prominent celebrities.
"Jeremiah Johnson" though is still a favorite of mine. Got me into blackpowder.
And surprised later when watching The Twilight Zone and he turned up as "Death": https://youtu.be/9tfyv4BZRug
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Days_of_the_Condor
RIP Mr. Redford and Sidney Poitier.
It was interesting hearing the names of the locations and bridges that previously meant nothing to me (except the golden gate).
It's free to watch on youtube at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy9XYQBBIJ4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36799776 https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets
Also, Lawrence (Larry) Lasker[2] was the writer of Sneakers AND War Games!
[1] https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lasker
I miss when Amazon had the "Dash" buttons, it was better than voice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash
I hope there are still movies being made today that inspire the next generation of programmers. It feels like it's all Marvel now.
http://bit.ly/3Ip3tr3 link to the shirt if you want to look at it. there is a message encoding in the background.
Do yourself a favor and watch some of his most important movies that represented his ideology "Truth", "Brubaker", "Sneakers" or "Spy Game".
Incredible performance by Redford, first film that really left an impression on me. There is only one or two lines of dialogue in the entire film.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017038/
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/all-is-lost-2013
Edit: Screenplay link! https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/All_Is_Lost.pdf
And it's very intimate. 106 minutes of just you the viewer, and Robert Redford. I might just rewatch it tonight. It feels fitting.
For real life lost at sea stories, there’s “438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea” telling the story of fisherman Salvador Alvarenga that spent more than a year adrift in the Pacific Ocean.
This is so essential now especially as Hollywood has become more consolidated and corporate.
I'm sad about his passing. I've always been such a huge fan of his.
He also met Terry Gilliam there, and he always recounts this first meeting fondly, so the festival led him into meeting an important mentor.
Outside of Quentin, Paul Thomas Anderson, a lot of people are called the Sundance Generation. Sundance changed cinema.
Similar story with the Sundance Film Festival, which will be moving out of Utah (to Boulder, Colorado) for the first time ever in 2027. For many people, this move represents a major shift away from the original character of the festival.
Being an espionage lover, of course, Spy Game will have a special place; then there's him playing Sundance Kid, but I remember him for Out of Africa and The Way We Were. I know many might say, 'But he was not central in them'; I'd say that he was. And no, not the only central role. That's how I remember him and these films. What masterpieces of films, and how beautifully he played his roles in these; and the things he stood for.
Apparently, as per Reddit, the director kept wanting her to look more scared in her initial scenes; explaining the horror of being kidnapped and imprisoned in her own home by a strange man. She kept pleading "But it's Robert Redford"!
If you like the espionage and unique feel of films of that era though, you can't do much better than Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation', starring a wonderfully morose Gene Hackman. A very worthy Palme D'Or winner in '74.
Fred Zinnemann's 'The Day of the Jackal' in '73 is also a high-point for espionage-thrillers of the decade.
[1] https://youtu.be/vZNnDiDSUiI?si=6hLz0X00uDhfVdPE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voPmfT09jlg
If you've never seen his movies, you can basically pick them at random and you'll find a good one. But All the President's Men is one of my favorite films of all time.
I have seen movies with Redford later, but unfortunately, I just now got info about connection of Redford with War games.
RIP Great man.
I first discovered his acting via a long forgotten torrent site.
I used to go onto Suprnova[0] and sort by "most seeded" and alongside a sea of pornography, up filtered gems like the 1992 cult classes we all know and love. (As well as, at the time, a lot of really got big beat electronic albums, but the uhn tiss tiss is a conversation for another thread.)
I had been a big gamer growing up, but found that folks weren't growing out of toxicity, and migrated to being a film/tv geek. More art galleries, less LAN parties, that sort of thing.
I guess he's jammin' revolvers into Russian dude's backs at the opera in heaven now...
I haven't found another film that captures the feeling of blowing past building security, the front desk, and the CEO's secretary to inform them if you were the guy who'd been threatening their NGO, they'd be dead -- and oh, by the way, here's a list of the systems I could own without setting foot in your building.
Nowadays, you're weird if you socialize offline and eschew social media, but back in the day being a hacker was not considered cool or interesting -- if anything, we were scary.
Truly a film before it's time, truly a loss.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprnova.org
RIP RR
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyR7XB0VBPM
Great movie, great commentary.
Robert Redford is also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, so getting on his bad-side is strongly career-effecting. People lived in fear of getting on this guy's bad side.
On set, he sounds like the typical Hollywood nightmare with famous clashes with his costars and directors. Arthur Laurents, the writer of The Way We Were, described Redford as an "ego maniac" and control freak for his on-set behaviors.
I say this as a leftist, but "The Truth" is liberal catering-to, and whitewashes Rathers's lack of due diligence in the Bush document, which even to a largely uniformed person like me thought, "Uh isnt that a modern font?" Dan Rather's rush to to this story is not a 'victim' but the failure of basic journalism. I dont think Rather should have resigned, but the idea that's he's this kind-hearted innocent, as the film mostly portrays him as, is just dishonesty. Rather saw money and fame in breaking a big story, and ran with it without much care.
Shrug, I've always seen his PR as very heavily manufactured and played towards the NYTimes and Variety and Sundance crowd in a very targeted way. And it worked, Redford died with an estate worth at least $200m. Capitalism gonna capitalism I guess, but the reality is Redford was quite the vindictive partisan who used his wealth and power against his perceived political enemies and whitewashed some questionable people.
But the carbon footprint of the jetset crowd is significant and worth pointing out. And, yes, how a lot of it is things like protecting wealthy-coded wildlife touristy-type areas in California and such and less effort in cleaning up factories in Alabama or India and such. Or how as a capital owning class person, he negotiated against the working class with his productions, and as such the dynamics that make Alabama and India poor, the capitalistic effect of driving down wages and the political power of these working people who want reform, well, he's part of the problem there too. He can't be both 'the boss' and a worker at the same time.
And the zero effort for him and his cohorts to fly first class instead of private jet or take a regular boat and not a mega yacht or other massive carbon producers.
But his behavior on set, his bias in "The Truth,' and his hiring policies are entirely his choice and can be made nearly entirely meritorious. He simply decided to not act meritorious.