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The Sting   ...   movie reviews , spoiler_low
tue 2005-jul-05 18:21:08 pdt   ...   permalink


Sunday night we watched The Sting. I had seen it maybe seven years ago or so.

<spoiler detail="low">

So it was interesting seeing it already knowing the "twist". It felt like not very much was actually affected by it. By which I guess I mean, not that many scenes turned out to have a different subtext the second time. Or at least, I think. It was, as I said, many years ago that I saw it the first time. (I'm avoiding actually saying what the twist is, since I figure that the fact that there is a twist is less of a spoiler than what the twist is.)

But the fact that it was sort of the original con artist film, and so as a result so many other more recent con artist films also include some sort of twist, so that you know going in that they're going to be trying to trick you, so you look for the twist, and maybe you figure it out and maybe you don't... Um, not sure where I was going with the phrase "the fact that" at the beginning of that non-sentence. I guess that fact makes this not a very big spoiler.

</spoiler>

Anyway, you know, it's a classic and all that. It certainly deserves that status -- it's really well done. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are good of course, but Robert Shaw I thought gave an even better performance, albeit in a smaller role. Perhaps most worthy of note is that the script (and the film in general) still holds up as well as it does when compared to its more recent counterparts -- unlike certain other films from the 1970's, you don't have to point out how ground-breaking it was "back then".


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