Cad Bane's chick at Pandas, Lightsabers and Cameras, oh my!! requested that we review old movies so here is the review for The Sting I don't know if a movie from the 70s is an old movie or not.
Disclaimer: We said before than we do not like movie with without action but we do like Mystery movie so we are not bias in a negative way.
Directed by: George Roy Hill
Genre: Crime, Mystery
Release date: December 25, 1973
Running Time: 129 minutes
MMPA rating: PG
The Good: Always keeps you guessing, Great acting, It did NOT have a slow plot, Excellent use of 1920's silent movie editing gave it a nice retro feel(it is not a silent movie), Shocking ending
The Bad:
Plot: Johnny Hooker (Redford), a grifter from Depression-era Joliet, Illinois, along with accomplices Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones) and Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) steal $11,000 in cash from an unsuspecting mark. Luther announces his retirement and advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago, who can teach him the art of the "big con."
Unfortunately the mark was a numbers racket courier for crime boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). Corrupt Joliet police Lieutenant William Snyder (Charles Durning) confronts Hooker, demanding a cut and revealing Lonnegan's involvement. Hooker pays Snyder in counterfeit bills. Lonnegan's men murder Luther and Hooker flees to Chicago.
Gondorff (Paul Newman), a once-great con-man now down on his luck, is initially reluctant to take on the dangerous Lonnegan. Eventually he decides to resurrect an elaborate and supposedly obsolete scam known as "the wire." A large number of con artists are recruited to simulate a betting parlor.
Gondorff's girlfriend (Eileen Brennan) steals Lonnegan's wallet aboard the opulent 20th Century Limited enroute from New York City. Gondorff, posing as boorish Chicago bookie "Shaw", buys his way into Lonnegan's private high-stakes poker game on the train with the latter's own money. He taunts, goads and out-cheats Lonnegan, winning $15,000. Hooker, posing as Shaw's disgruntled employee "Kelly", is sent to collect the winnings (which Lonnegan, lacking his wallet, was of course unable to pay).
"Kelly" pretends to seek the overthrow of his boss, Shaw, convincing Lonnegan that he has a partner in the Chicago Western Union office named Les Harmon, and that he can use this connection to win large sums of money in Shaw's off-track betting (OTB) establishment by past-posting. Harmon is actually one of the lead con artists, going by the name Kid Twist. He and J.J. Singleton, another con man, successfully "borrow" an actual Western Union office for a very brief time, to help dupe Lonnegan.
Plot: 9.0/10- Right when you think you got the movie figured out something surprising happens.
Action: N/A- Other than a few chase scene not munch else.
Acting: 8.7/10- Robert Redford and Paul Newman gave great performances and the rest of the cast was good.
Special effects: N/A
Soundtrack: 7.8/10- The soundtrack is mostly 1920s piano music which fit the setting of the movie perfectly.
Comedy: N/A
Overall: 8.4/10- The Sting is an excellent mystery crime movie that we highly reconmend.
Closing comments: The Sting is an entertaining movie that always keeps you guessing.
Recommended for: Crime movie fans, Mystery movie fans,
One of my .favorite movies of all time.
ReplyDeleteI saw most movies made after 1964 during there first run at the theaters. Many and Blade Runner comes first to mind did not hold up as well as I remembered them. For years Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was my answer for favorite movie, still great but the sting holds up better.