"Sneakers" (1992)

In 1969, Martin Brice (Robert Redford) and his buddy Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) were cracking into Richard Nixon's personal checking account and donating his money to left-wing causes. Cosmo tricks Martin into braving the icy weather to get some pizza, but the police show up and arrest Cosmo. Martin escapes and spends the next 20 years hiding his identity and assembling a crack team of crackers-for-hire, running security tests on banks by breaking into them and such. But now the NSA has discovered his identity and is requiring him to pull a heist for them -- find Professor Janik's little black box, an electronic device that can crack computer encryption in seconds instead of decades. Anybody wanna black out New England? Crash a few passenger jets? There isn't a government in the world that wouldn't kill them all for that thing. And, as it turns out, the guys that hired them are a front for the mob. Too many secrets.

Sneakers is a terrific heist film from 1992. It has perhaps the most polished writing in any movie, terrific tension, a great sense of humor, an all-star cast (I especially love Dan Aykroyd as the paranoid conspiracy buff "Mother"), and a sense of same-as-life-size realism (rather than larger-than-life) that is sorely missing in more modern movies. And it does it all within the confines of a well-deserved, family-friendly PG-13 rating. It is an absolute joy, a treat for the geek, spy, wonk, or sneak-thief in all of us.