The Sting

1973 Best Picture

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A grifter's long-time partner is murdered, so he befriends an older conman in order to pull off the "big con" and get his revenge.

I can't believe George Roy Hill had the balls to rip off the iconic music from the opening credits of Ben & Arthur. What do you all think of the ragtime score? I like it, but I'm a fan of the music anyway. To me, it just fits the mood. Ragtime's got its own smoke rings, but at the same time, there's a playfulness that matches our story and its characters. In a weird way, it reminds me of Tarantino's use of surf guitar music in Pulp Fiction which makes me start wondering if The Sting is the 1973 equivalent of Pulp Fiction. Or is that just an insult to everybody involved? This movie just emanates a coolness. It's something I remember watching as an infant, just two months old right on Christmas, and being confused by the twisty, complex plot, but the movie had a carousel and Robert Redford wore a great suit and Newman says, "Sorry I'm late, guys. I was taking a crap." Redford and Newman established rapport in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so it's not a surprise here even though the characters are much different. And this really is a character film more than a crime movie or a period piece or a comedy or a drama even though it's all of those things, too. Love how the characters are subtly drawn here. With Newman's Henry Gondorff, it's in his eyes, a guy who's looking to recapture a little something and has all the confidence in the world which is only too bad because he's not really done much of anything with it. Redford's Johnny Hooker is sprightly and has the shape of a comic book character, and you appreciate him for his muddled motivations. There's also a submerged vulnerability with the character that you only catch glimpses of a couple times. But it's there, friends. It's there. What a team, and so much fun to watch in a movie that keeps the audience guessing. And how much fun is it watching Newman do card tricks? Are those his hands or is there movie trickery going on there? I could have watched another half an hour of that, and that's probably true of the poker game on the train, too. Shaw's a cool but perfectly naive antagonist Doyle Lonnegan, and Luke Skywalker's grandfather, with similar deep and dulcet tones of his son; Ray Walston; and Charles Durning round out a great cast. The Chicago skyline and streets look great, and the 70's gritty look also gives this an authenticity. All that might seem like the ingredients of a great film, but none of it is what makes this movie the classic that it is. No, the real genius here is the brief appearance of Leonard Barr with his popcorn-eating duck joke. Genius. Ironically, the titular sting, being the moment when the conned person realizes what's happened and feels the pain, isn't even shown. The movie's too classy for that probably.