Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Something about the heist genre seriously confuses me.  No no, it’s not the intricate/incomprehensible plots or the way the audience is manipulated into rooting for a lovable bunch of criminals.  Basically, what I don’t understand is why modern remakes like Ocean’s 11 and The Italian Job, and original creations like The Bank Job, exist at all.  I’m not saying they’re bad movies!  Ocean’s 11 in particular is tons of fun, with a fantastic cast and a great finale.  It’s just that, well, they’re all entirely unnecessary, because The Sting perfected the genre in 1973 and there was simply nowhere to go but down.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman star as a pair of lovable con artists — one up-and-coming, one an old pro — out to pull the ultimate grift on uptight Irish mobster Robert Shaw.  Redford and Newman don’t quite recapture the insanely perfect chemistry of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, but that’s the kind of magic that only happens once in a lifetime.  Nevertheless, they both play their characters with easy grins and are a joy to watch.  Newman plays one of the best poker games put to film against an increasingly furious Shaw, while Redford bounces around Chicago looking utterly dashing in 1930s clothing, and boy does he know it.

If the film was down to Redford and Newman as Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorff carrying a heist all by themselves, it would probably still be pretty great.  But the supporting cast comes into play in a big way, and the scope of the con dwarfs anything I’ve seen in another heist film.  The secondary characters like Kid Twist and J.J. Singleton show up, make sure the job sounds good and impossible, then jump in feet first and make it happen.  The Sting portrays an entire culture of con-men, interconnected and operated like a genuine industry.  Kid Twist rounds up recruits to perpetuate a massive robbery, and they’re all, obviously, perfect gentlemen.

That’s really what separates The Sting so profoundly from the rest of its genre — everything works together to project an easy, charming atmosphere of pure confidence, which permeates everything from the costuming to the set design to the intertitles.  The setting feels utterly authentic, even if it’s clearly filmed on sets, and Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece “The Entertainer” add enormously to the 1930s flavor.

The plot carries its weight just like everything else, and strikes a typical balance between revelation and secrets hidden until the grand finale.  And if a twist is a necessary component of any heist movie, The Sting may, again, have the very best.  It’s also the only film I’ve ever seen that begins a con with the opening credits.  But that’s easy to do, when you know you can pull it off.