Review of The Sting

God, this movie is absolute fabulous.

I was initially interested because it had Robert Redford and Paul Newman co-starring; having just watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the first time, I was eager for more from that pair. I didn't feel so strongly about Butch Cassidy that I wanted to follow its director to this film, but then my decision was clinched when I saw on Wikipedia that The Sting's plot took inspiration from David Maurer's book The Big Con, which I read just a few months ago.

The operation of a "big store" con, as expertly detailed in Maurer's book, must naturally be somewhat formulaic, so that criminals can successfully pull it off time and time again. At first, The Sting appears to faithfully adhere to the big con formula, even going so far as to explicitly split the movie, with intertitles, into sections named after the stages of the formula. However, what makes The Sting so good is that the movie itself is a con!

The classic big con formula is complicated with several twists, full knowledge of which is held back from the audience until the last moments of the film. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was tricked by both of the major reveals (the first one being Solino.)

All in all, highly recommended, and I'm quite surprised that Alexis didn't have this movie on his shortlist of films through which a DM can study intrigue.