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Phil Alden Robinson (USA, 1950), already a screenwriter, debuted as a director with In the Mood (1987).
Field of Dreams (1989) is a fairy tale based on the book
"Shoeless Joe" by W.P. Kinsella.
It is a film about baseball, a sport that is popular in the United States.
The whole film is been a guilty son's desire to reconcile with his dead father.
Ray, a honest hard-working farmer who lives with his nice family in a rural
area surrounded by green fields,
has a vision and hears a famous baseball player called "Shoeless", who was
banned from playing because of some illegal act, telling him to build a
baseball field.
It turns out that Shoeless was the player that Ray and his father argued about
before they fell apart and never talked again.
Ray obeys: clears up the corn field and builds a baseball field.
One after the other, the ghosts of the eight convicted baseball players of
Shoeless' team come to play baseball in Ray's field.
Then the voice talks to him again. Ray and his wife were political activists
back in the 1960s and Ray thinks that the voice is telling him to travel to a
big city and meet with a leader of the 1960s, Terrance.
Terrance tells Ray that he would like to be forgotten, but he also hears the
voice and together they
decide to travel to another state to find a physician nicknamed "Moonlight",
another misfit whose baseball career failed miserably.
Terrence thinks that baseball is a metaphor for everything that is good about
America.
The baseball field assumes a metaphysical status, of a place where failed
people can reevaluate their lives.
Ray and Terrance return to Ray's home, and give young man Archie a ride.
Terrance meets Shoeless and the other ghosts who are practicing in the field
(they even brought another team play against) and Archie just joins them.
Ray is bankrupt and businessman are trying to take his land. His brother in
law begs him to sell, but Ray's little daughter gets the idea to turn the
baseball field into a big show. Terrance is on her side, for ideological
reasons. Ray stands to lose everything, but decides to go along.
Even his brother in law gets converted when he sees the physician save the
little girl's life.
All the players disappear in the corn fields, and Terrance follows them.
Finally, the ghost of all ghosts appears: Ray's father, as one of the young
baseball players.
They play baseball, just the two of them, and Ray makes peace this way with
the memory of his father.
The last scene shows a long road lit in the night that takes tourists into
the field.
Sneakers (1992), Robinson's masterpiece, is a political thriller in
the best Hitchcock-ian tradition, a perfect clockwork of action and suspicion
built around the stereotypical "innocent" who has to redeem himself from a
crime he did not commit and survive a conspiracy woven by an organization
far more powerful than him.
A gentle sense of humour adds to the enjoyment of the fantastic script.
All of the certainties of the protagonist are called into question, until Martin no longer knows what to believe. But it is the world that has changed, and that he no longer understands. The world of idealists, in which everyone had something to believe in, has been transformed into a world driven by power and money, where no one can be trusted and there is nothing left to believe in.
Martin (Robert Redford) is a former communist activist from the 1960s. He has since changed his name and now runs a company that specializes in testing the security systems of banks. In the opening scene, he and his team infiltrate a bank and effectively rob it without anyone noticing.
One day, two agents from the government agency NSA appear at his office and ask him to help with an important project. Martin refuses, but later visits their offices. On the way, a homeless man begging on the street tells him, They took away my home, but Martin pays no attention. The two NSA agents explain the mission: they need to recover a black box that may be connected to Russian espionage, but they cannot obtain it legally. They also know that Martin changed his name and that an arrest warrant from his radical past is still outstanding. He has no choice.
Martin and his associatesone of whom is blindbegin following the mathematician who supposedly invented the black box. They witness an attractive Czech scientist attempting to seduce him, and the blind member of the team deduces that the black box is concealed inside the mathematicians answering machine.
Martin breaks into the mathematicians apartment and steals the black box, but he is caught by the Czech scientist. He improvises an absurd cover story, which she surprisingly believes, while his teammates secretly feed him lines through a radio transmitter.
At a party hosted by his former girlfriend, Martin tells his colleagues what happened in the 1960s. The police arrested his radical group while he was out buying a pizza. He escaped to Canada, but his partner Cos was captured and eventually died in prison.
Back at their laboratory, the blind expert examines the black box and discovers its true nature: it contains a microchip capable of penetrating any computer in the U.S. government.
Martin and one of his colleagues arrange to deliver the black box to the NSA agents at a caf. While Martin is handing over the briefcase and waiting for payment, his colleague notices in a newspaper that the mathematician has been murdered. He realizes the agents are impostors. He calls Martin with a pretext, and the two flee before the supposed agents can stop them.
Martin returns to the offices he had previously visited. Not only is there no NSA office there, but the building is actually being demolished. The same homeless man repeats, They took away my home, the warning Martin had ignored earlier. Martin realizes he may have handed a devastating weapon to a foreign power and orders his team to evacuate their laboratory.
Suspecting Russian involvement, Martin visits a friend who is a Russian consul. The diplomat swears he has nothing to do with it but offers to help. To avoid CIA surveillance microphones, he drives Martin around in a limousine and shows him photographs of people who have worked for them. Martin recognizes one of the fake NSA agents, and the diplomat turns pale. Before he can reveal who the man really works for, the police stop the limousine. Martin is ordered out of the car, and the supposed officers immediately execute the diplomat and his driver. Once again, they are not real police officers.
Martin is taken, hidden in the trunk of a car, to meet the mastermind behind the conspiracy: his old radical friend Cos, the one who supposedly died in prison. Cos has become the leader of a powerful criminal financial organization. The mathematicians chip, which would have allowed the U.S. government to penetrate Coss databases, will instead allow Cos to penetrate government databases. He immediately uses it to frame Martin for the consuls murder and to reveal Martins new identity to law enforcement.
Martin reunites with his team, who are temporarily staying at his ex-girlfriends house. Using their sophisticated technology, they contact the real NSA and ask for protection. Martin quickly realizes, however, that without the black box he has no leverage and cannot expect their help.
Martin and his team decide to locate the gangsters headquarters. By reconstructing the sounds Martin heard while being transported in the trunk of the car, they manage to identify the building.
Now they must infiltrate a heavily secured building and reach Coss office. First they target one of Coss technicians. By searching through his trash, they discover that he is desperately looking for the ideal woman. Martins ex-girlfriend is sent on a date with him in order to record the voice patterns needed to access the building. Meanwhile, Martin is trained to walk in extreme slow motion to avoid motion-sensitive alarms.
Using the technicians magnetic ID card and recorded voice, Martins specialists bypass the buildings elaborate security systems, allowing Martin to make his way toward Coss office. The woman continues to distract the technician whose identity they have stolen, but he eventually realizes she has been deceiving him and rushes to the building, bringing her with him.
Martin succeeds in stealing the black box and escapes into the air-conditioning ducts before he can be caught. Cos realizes what is happening and takes the woman hostage. As Coss men search for Martin, he crawls through the ventilation system while receiving instructions from his team over the radio. Eventually, however, he cannot bear to sacrifice his ex-girlfriend and surrenders.
Cos orders both of them executed, but another member of Martins team manages to free them. The rest of the team is waiting outside, but they are ambushed. Only the blind specialist remains in the van. Following Martins instructions, he drives the van and picks up the escapees.
The ordeal is not over. Cos is waiting for them with a gun. Martin hands over the black box and walks away despite Coss pleas and threats. Cos urges him to join his crusade against the worlds databases. Too late, Cos realizes that Martin has given him a fake black box.
Martin and his team return triumphantly to their base. But a group of agents is waiting for them. This time it is the real NSA, which wants the black box. Martin realizes that even this operation is technically illegal. Each member of the team demands something in exchange for the device, but their requests are surprisingly modest: Martin wants to be left alone forever; another wants a camper van; another asks for a plane ticket for a vacation in Europe; another simply wants the phone number of the policewoman holding them at gunpoint; the blind man asks only for peace on Earth (to which the NSA agent replies, We are the U.S. government. We dont do those sorts of things); and the woman says she is already happy as she is.
Perplexed by this group of idealists, the NSA agent agrees to the exchange. Martin hands over the black box but casually informs him that it does not work. After the NSA leaves, Martin reveals to his ex-girlfriend that he secretly kept the microchip.
Some time later, strange things begin happening in the United States: conservative organizations mysteriously lose money, while radical causes unexpectedly find themselves receiving funds.
He still directed
Freedom Song
(2000),
The Sum of All Fears
(2002),
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
(2014).
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