One of my favorite scenes in Sneakers is when David Straithairn’s blind character has to drive a van across a giant parking lot aided only by a voice on the other end of a walkie-talkie guiding him along. It, for me, summarized the ridiculousness embedded in what should have been under normal circumstances, a barn burner of a drama.
The movie is incredible, mostly because out of cast featuring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier and Dan Aykroyd, Aykroyd isn’t the comedic relief.
Fortunately, Phil Alden Robinson, the man who wrote it (and Field of Dreams), has been hired on to write about stealing things once more – this time for J.J. Abrams. I’ll sidestep the normal ego-boosting I do for Abrams by simply saying that:
- This is a dynamite creative pairing; and
- Abrams really is obsessed with the 80s and early 90s
The movie itself is a retelling of a real-life diamond heist where a group of ten men (just one more, and the rights would have been impossible) stole from a highly secure facility to the tune of approximately $100 million in the shiny rocks.
According to Heat Vision, the script will actually be culled from an article about the heist in Wired Magazine.
What do you think?
Related Topics: JJ Abrams
