On the podcast this week, Steven and Sean are dusting off their finest pin-striped suits and concocting a foolproof plan to win big with this week’s episode. It’s the 1973 film from George Roy Hill, The Sting.
Is there anything better than a Paul Newman-Robert Redford team-up? This one and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid goes to show us all that those two make some serious magic when they’re on-screen together. We love their work and wish they could have co-starred in at least one more film, but sadly ’tis not in the cards for us. We’ll always have those two, though. They’re satisfying enough.
In this film, we’ve got one of the greatest cons ever set to film. Who doesn’t love to pull a fast one over on ol’ Robert Shaw? If you’re anything like Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker, then you’re going to delight in taking advantage of him. Did he have it coming? Well yeah! Dude killed Johnny’s good friend, Luther Coleman. Of course he had it coming, and he deserved a hell of a lot more. He lost a bunch of money; Luther lost his life. How is that fair? What a damn shame.
Amid all this is a con artist story like you dream about. This is one of those classic films that so many others have tried to emulate. Most of them aren’t successful. It’s hard enough to capture lightning in a bottle once, and it’s danged near impossible to do it twice. The significance of The Sting reverberates throughout film history. Without it, we’d miss out on so many other thrilling stories.
We loved watching this film unfold, sometimes getting conned ourselves. It’s the sort of story that film lovers want to experience. If you enjoy watching a great movie with a stellar cast, confident writing, and wonderful direction, this is sure to be a good one for you.
(Recorded on October 05, 2020)
Links to Stuff We Mentioned:
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope - IMDb
Raiders of the Lost Ark - IMDb
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - IMDb
The Invisible Man - Art of the Title
