The Sting

Friday, February 21 - Sunday, February 23, 2014

DCP projection

“THE STING is one of the most stylish movies of the year… The director is George Roy Hill, and the stars are those two good old buddies Paul Newman and Robert Redford. This time, they play con men who methodically and with great ingenuity fleece a rich mark (Robert Shaw). Their methods are incredibly complex (it would take all of today’s space to attempt to explain them.) A lot of the fun in the movie is watching Hill and his screenwriter, David S. Ward, keep the plot straight.

“The movie is set in Chicago of the 1930s, and many of the outdoor scenes were shot here (including an effective platform shot at Union Station). We see a big, confused, lusty, brawling city where the big guys with the muscle are somehow always losing to the guys with the confidence angles. Robert Shaw never figures out what hit him. Shaw is a high-stakes gambler who first gets hooked during a poker game between New York and Chicago on the 20th Century Limited. Newman and Redford spot him, mark him and begin to manipulate him. He never figures out they even know each other, and that’s part of the charm: They have to play a lot of scenes for him as complete strangers, as Redford casually lets drop that he knows the location of the biggest wire room in Chicago.

“The idea, Redford explains, is to allow Shaw to win big on a fixed horse race in order to… but I wasn’t kidding when I said the scheme is complicated. Paul Newman operates the wire room. Or should we say it appears to be operated by Newman. Or, more accurately, it appears to be a wire room, because the entire operation is simply a theatrical set, and everybody in the room is an actor, and the “broadcasts” from the track actually are being made up by an announcer in the back room…

“The style here is so seductive and witty it’s hard to pin down. It’s like nothing else I’ve seen by Hill, and at times, it almost reminds me of Jacques Tati crossed with Robert Altman. It’s good to get a crime movie more concerned with humor and character than with blood and gore; here’s one, as we say, for the whole family.” – Roger Ebert

  • Country USA
  • Rating PG
  • Year 1973
  • Running Time 129 minutes
  • Director George Roy Hill

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.