An excerpt from my script review for The Sting (1973) which will be available 09/23/25:
1.) Marketability of the Idea
So…this was started yesterday, but mom is visiting from Florida all week. Over the weekend we started an abridged guide to the MCU, starting with Ragnarok, then Infinity War and then yesterday afternoon she had some time and wanted to finish things out with Endgame.
Since I wasn’t very far into this review, due to going down a rabbit hole on YouTube of ragtime music, I willingly obliged her.
Before we started the whole thing, and maybe I should have waited until right before starting Endgame, I showed her quick clips of Sam and Cap running around the Reflection Pool in DC and then the scene where the Avengers try to lift Mjolnir to put a few reveals into context. Told her this was quick background that saved her a lot of time.
Anyway, we get to the big climax of Endgame, I grab my phone getting ready to record her reaction for the boy, and then she…was pretty underwhelmed, lol.
Not sure she grasped the full excitement of the moment, shrugging off that Cap was worthy of Thor’s hammer and that all these people came back to life.
She was glad Spider-Man was back and then got sad knowing that Chadwick Boseman is no longer with us.
All in all though she liked the movies and was interested in watching some of the others that led up to it.
But we’re here to talk about The Sting.
This is easily my favorite Robert Redford film, and if you gave me enough time to think of it when pressed for a Top 10 list, it would probably be on there too.
(Right after Empire Strikes Back and About a Boy, maybe…)
Does this still hold up though?
I think it’s interesting that David Ward wrote this, which was great, and then followed it up with…Major League?!
(Sleepless in Seattle was also in there.)
That’s kind of funny, and good on him for not being shoehorned into one genre.
This was one of those classic films my parents showed me. I was taking piano lessons, learning The Entertainer by Scott Joplin, so naturally I had to see this movie, right?
The film stuck with me, but piano didn’t.
(Although I do wish I would have stuck with it now as an adult.)
This was a time in my life where my mom and grandma were really pushing for me to be musical, since I wasn’t athletic.
The Glenn Miller Story, The Five Pennies, and one rare favorite of mine, Bathing Beauties starring Red Skelton, where he finds a loophole and enrolls in a New England girls college to get his teaching girlfriend back.
All were meant to inspire me, and although they didn’t rub off on me musically, I did appreciate them from a classic cinema aspect.
(Most were given to the boss one Christmas for a movie marathon, adding Sunset Boulevard and The Big Sleep to break up all the show tunes.)
Anyway…one of the things The Sting did so well was the sharp use of dialogue.
We’ll go into it in that particular section later with specific examples, but it was really well done, and would hold up even to today’s standards.
The only thing that really wouldn’t would be was the continued use of the N word. That’s something to use sparingly, if at all, and you’re not Quentin Tarantino, who has Sam Jackson to give him the permission to say it on behalf of all Black folks…
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