Sneakers (1992) — Yorke Five-Act Structure

40 beats mapped to John Yorke's five-act knowledge-axis model, built from the Backbeats intermediate layer. Hover any beat for the full description.

Act 3 — Crisis
Beat 19. The handoff goes wrong: Janek is dead, Gordon is a fraud.
Midpoint
[0:51] — Backbeats 25 — Score: 20/100
Crease, frantic: "Janek's dead. They killed him." Bishop protests the NSA doesn't kill people. Crease throws his own words back. Bishop realizes: "They probably were government. Just not ours." Everything Bishop thought he knew about the mission is wrong. The midpoint reframes the entire story.

Overview

Beats
40
from 60 backbeats
SRT Entries
1,569
~126 min runtime
Footnotes
120
SRT + external sources
Act Split
8-8-8-9-7
by knowledge-axis shifts
Midpoint
Beat 19
0:50:46 — handoff fraud

Goal Progress Across the Film

Each beat scored 0–100 for proximity to Bishop's conscious Want (clear his record, protect the team). Yorke labels self-organize via D3 force simulation to avoid overlap. Hover any point for the full beat description.

Yorke Knowledge-Axis Arc

The five acts as phases of Bishop's knowledge journey. Each beat is a node; size encodes dramatic weight. Yorke structural points are highlighted. Hover for descriptions.

Structural Point Definitions and Rationales

1/11

Opening Image

Beat 1 [0:01:44]
The first visual/scene establishing the world before disruption. Beat 1 by definition. (johnyorkestory.com)
Two college hackers in a dorm room. The world before disruption is literally a different era — 1969, when information activism was a prank.
2/11

Theme Stated

Beat 2 [~0:03:34]
An early line or moment articulating the film's central argument. (storyplanner.com)
Cosmo's arrest while Marty escapes. The theme — that luck and information determine who has power and who goes to prison — is stated through action, not dialogue.
3/11

Inciting Incident

Beat 5 [0:11:03]
"An invitation for the protagonist to leave the familiar and venture into the unknown." (johnyorkestory.com)
Gordon and Wallace's arrival, specifically their recitation of the team's criminal records. The disruption is not the job offer but the demonstration that Bishop's world is already penetrated.
4/11

Want Established

Beat 8 [0:18:09]
The conscious goal the protagonist pursues. (robwalker.blog)
Bishop wants his record cleared, the team wants the money. Explicit and simple.
5/11

Need Established

Beat 7 [0:17:21]
The deeper psychological requirement for genuine growth, often implicit. (robwalker.blog, Arc Studio)
Bishop's deeper need — to stop living behind a false identity, to be authentic with the people he trusts — surfaces when Crease says "We're your partners. You tell us."
6/11

Debate

Beat 9 [0:18:55]
The protagonist hesitates or resists the call. Retained from Snyder where it illuminates the film.
Liz's initial refusal to help voices the film's debate about whether the mission is worth the risk.
7/11

Point of No Return

Beat 16 [0:39:22]
The protagonist commits and cannot go back. (johnyorkestory.com)
The discovery of what the box can do. Once the team knows it is THE code-breaker, they cannot un-know it. Crease's line — "There isn't a government on this planet that wouldn't kill us all for that thing" — makes the irreversibility explicit.
8/11

Midpoint

Beat 19 [0:50:46]
"The point halfway through Act 3 where the truth is revealed… the protagonist embraces for the first time the quality they will need to become complete." (johnyorkestory.com, storyplanner.com)
The handoff goes wrong. Bishop learns that Gordon and Wallace are frauds, Janek is dead, and he has handed the most powerful tool in the world to an unknown enemy. This is the classic Yorke midpoint: a revelation that reframes the protagonist's understanding.
9/11

Crisis

Beat 25 [1:07:30]
The lowest point. The want-strategy has failed. The protagonist confronts their deepest fears. (johnyorkestory.com)
Bishop at Liz's door, beaten and desperate. He has lost the box, his identity is blown, he is framed for murder, and his old friend is the enemy. The want-strategy has completely failed.
10/11

Climax

Beat 38 [1:46:57]
The final confrontation where external obstacles represent internal struggles. (robwalker.blog)
The multi-layered escape from PlayTronics — Carl through the ceiling, Crease with the gun, Whistler driving blind. Every team member's unique skill is deployed in the final push.
11/11

Closing Image

Beat 40 [~1:54:46]
The new equilibrium. The last beat mirrors or inverts the Opening Image.
Bishop uses the real chip to drain the Republican National Committee and fund progressive causes. The 1969 prank is completed — but this time by a man who understands what the stakes really are.

Act Break Justifications

BoundaryBetween BeatsTimestampKnowledge-Axis Rationale
Act 1→28 → 90:18:09The team has accepted the mission and Bishop recruits Liz — he stops being passive and starts pursuing the goal.
Act 2→316 → 170:46:30The box's power is revealed; the team cannot retreat — they now possess something every government would kill for.
Act 3→424 → 251:05:24Cosmo has burned Bishop's alias and framed him for murder — the post-knowledge strategy has completely collapsed.
Act 4→533 → 341:27:12The team has synthesized Werner's voice and prepped the infiltration — Bishop begins the final push.

Methodology

Source pipeline: Raw SRT (1,569 entries) → Annotated SRT (40 suggested beats, speaker IDs, visual action) → Backbeats (60 model-agnostic scene atoms) → 40 Yorke beats (this page).

Yorke framework: 11 structural points from Into the Woods. Act breaks placed by knowledge-axis shifts, not arithmetic. Goal-progress scores are editorial judgments for visualization.

D3 labels: Force simulation with forceCollide + forceY runs 300 ticks to settle Yorke labels into non-overlapping positions. Leader lines connect labels to data points.