Starring: Robert Redford, Dan Akroyd, Ben Kingsley, Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell, David Straithairn This movie is just so good, it's almost hard to sum up the greatness in a review. At one point this was basically my favorite movie, but now it's just one of my favorite movies. It still gets a place on the mantel.<br /><br />The movie starts with a young Marty and Cosmo back in 1969 doing some early computer hacking. They're busily transferring money from those who have it to those who need it. Example, taking from Richard Nixon's personal checking account and giving it to the Association of Legalized Marijuana. Truly, Robin Hoods. But then Marty gets hungry, so he heads out for pizza. When he gets to the van and tries to start it, flashing lights appear outside, head upstairs, and haul Cosmo away. Marty runs, and then it fades to present day, which when the movie was made, was 1992.<br /><br />Martin Brice (Redford) now goes by the alias of Martin Bishop. He has an interesting job. As a bank teller says, "So you get hired to break into other people's places, to make sure nobody can break into their places?" In the team is a blind sound expert who goes by the name of Whistler (Straithairn), an electronics expert who goes by Mother (Akroyd), a teenager named Carl (Phoenix), and an ex-CIA agent, Donald Crease (Poitier).<br /><br />One day they get some clients who walk in with a long list of information on all the people in Bishop's team. The only person they don't have info on is Martin Bishop. They then identify themselves as NSA, tell Bishop that they know his real identity, and ask to meet with them again for a special assignment. That assignment is to steal a little black box from some mathematician. Bishop's crew doesn't know what the box does, so they accept the offer. As part of the deal it pays $175,000, and they'll clear Bishop's record.<br /><br />Once they have the box, they fiddle around with it a little and discover that it is actually a sophisticated code breaker that can hack American encryption systems. But when they are getting ready to give it to the NSA guys, they find out that Dr. Janek, the mathematician, has been murdered. At this point it's kind of hard to not wonder how important the box is, but unfortunately, the box is already in the NSA's hands before they find out about Janek, and so they drive away with no money and no little black box.<br /><br />It's around this point where the plot of the movie really takes off and it gets very interesting. I'm not going to say much else. You'll just have to watch it for yourself and see.<br /><br />Bottom Line: 4 out of 4 (own this movie)