The title characters in this star-heavy film are codecrackers or, as the script has it, 'People you hire to break into their places to make sure no one can break into their places'. The more intriguing possibilities of such a set-up are largely ignored by writer-director Phil Alden Robinson in favour of a straight forward jokey 'caper' film, as the sneakers mount a plan to break into the mega-security building run by leader Robert Redford's old college partner Ben Kingsley. Kingsley has a master code-breaking device that the sneakers stole, gave to the 'government' and now want back. It's all quite tense fun, although it gets very silly at the end, as a group of agents bargain with the sneakers when they could just as easily gun them down. An ageing Redford looks ill-at-ease; Sidney Poitier is better on both counts as his ex-FBI aide, and Dan Aykroyd has a few good lines as their comrade, 'Mother'. You wonder, though, if a lightweight film like this would ever have got made without this cast, that also includes River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell and David Strathairn.

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