ever heard of the movie foolproof?

A few thoughts on a movie I watched this weekend that I’d never heard of before: Foolproof. Kudos to either the technical advisor or writer/director of this film for their research.*

1. Good lord, lockpicking done right?! Multiple times?! Indeed, not only do we see one of the protagonists pick several locks using *gasp* both a tension wrench and pick, but in at least one of those attempts it isn’t *double gasp* immediate! They even mention how it is taking him over 4 minutes to pick. I about fell over during that scene.

2. The protagonists are essentially doing red team activities, with an emphasis on physical attacks. To me, this sounds like a very healthy endeavor, even though they’re targeting companies they’re not affiliated with. One thing I liked, especially in their plans, is the lack of hollywood dramatic license. Or rather, diminished use of it. I appreciate that…unlike the nonsense dialogue of Swordfish or stylized file browsing of Hackers. This is more like Sneakers only without the sci-fi-esque prize (encryption decoder box).

I had more things to say last night, but I’m in a hurry this morning, so suffice to say I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, even though I see it was a terrible financial failure back in 2003. Give it a try!

* Minus one scene with the ever-present sharpening of a grainy image to read text on it. They came ever so close to pulling this off appropriately! They even had the dialogue correct and even sort of cut away from the usual telltale problem most films fall into, but you can still tell the print-out of the image is far clearer than it should be from a grainy security camera, even with some diddling to tease out some contrast to read text.