EVERYONE’S SEEN “The Sting,” because it’s a great movie. Well, I guess not everyone, but you know what I mean. And it’s still a great movie. Newman and Redford are wonderful (I’ve always wished the two of them had made more together), and the rest of the cast is as good as it gets: Robert Shaw, Eileen Brennan, Charles Durning, Harold Gould, Ray Walston, Dana Elcar, and many others. The great George Roy Hill directed–he passed on not too long ago–and David S. Ward wrote the script. I saw it again last week. We were flipping around, it was just coming on and, you know how it is, you kind of groan, because you know there’s no way you’re not going to watch the whole thing. “Oh,” you always think to yourself, “I’ll just watch up until they get on the train,” but of course that’s stupid; you’re in ’til the credits, and you should just be grateful it’s not “Gone With The Wind.” More than once I’ve been slumped on the couch like a deflated “S” at three in the morning on a Sunday night waiting for Al Pacino to snort that mountain of coke and snarl, “Say hello to my little fren’.”
As you know, “The Sting” is about con men, and they’re all cute and cuddly and funny. Heroic, too. The cops, on the other hand, are vicious and corrupt, the FBI is manipulative and conniving, and the murderously vindictive “mark” is a banker. But that doesn’t seem to matter, does it?
