This film seems to be the result of a deliberate attempt to rekindle the magic behind Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by reassembling the creative team of Paul Newman, Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill. Since we liked the earlier film so much, putting it on the list was a no brainer. It does evoke the same tone and look very strongly beginning with the opening scene featuring the familiar ragtime melody “The Entertainer”.

Hooker is small time con man who works together with his partner Luther Coleman. They score a large amount of cash from someone who actually works for a local crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Hit men kill Luther and Hooker manages to escape though a corrupt policeman Snyder is also on his trail. Hooker finds an old friend of Luther named Henry Gondorff who specializes in large scale cons. Intent on revenge, they and a large number of other con men who also knew Luther, create a complicated scheme to swindle his money. It involves Gondorff posing as a mob boss himself who runs a numbers racket, Hooker pretending to his second in command who wants to take over the operation and begins with infiltrating a poker game on a train to get in touch with Lonnegan. While this is going on, Hooker still has to dodge assassins and the police.

As heist and con films usually are, The Sting is fast paced and a lot of fun to watch. The dynamic between Newman and Redford is still great though it’s more muted now as there are plenty of other supporting characters. The scam isn’t too complicated by the standards of modern cinema and it isn’t too hard to predict the twists, plentiful though they are. The interesting part of it is that they need to pull it off without the mark ever realizing that he has been swindled as he is a mob boss with powerful connections. That was rather cool. Still, I don’t think the premise is all that plausible, relying as it does on the existence of wide brotherhood of confidence men who all know and trust one another. Lonnergan also makes for a rather weak villain as he’s a chump who takes way too long to realize that he has been pickpocketed. I also don’t get why he thinks that Hooker needs him and his role is only supposed to be the one placing the bets, something that anyone off the streets can pull off.

The film is beautifully shot with a deliberate eye to evoking the visual style of an earlier era and everyone looks like they’re having a lot of fun. Overall however it’s still a less weighty film with less emotional depth. Great entertainment but it’s not an all time great like the earlier film is.