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The Sting
A novice con man teams up with an acknowledged master to avenge the murder of a mutual friend by pulling off the ultimate big con and swindling a fortune from a big-time mobster.
1973 · Directed by George Roy Hill · 129 min · Comedy · Crime · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 21 frames
Tagline
...all it takes is a little confidence.
Plot
In September 1936, amid the Great Depression, grifter Johnny Hooker and his partners, Luther Coleman and Joe Erie, con $11,000 in cash from an unsuspecting victim in Joliet, Illinois. Hooker loses his share of the con on a rigged roulette game, while Luther, buoyed by the windfall, decides to retire. He tells Hooker to seek out his old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago, to learn "the big con". Corrupt Joliet police lieutenant William Snyder confronts Hooker, revealing that their mark was a courier for vicious Irish-American crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Lonnegan's men murder Luther and the courier. After finding Luther dead, Hooker flees to Chicago.
Hooker finds Gondorff drunk and in hiding from the FBI, running a carousel that is a front for a brothel, and asks for help taking down Lonnegan. Initially reluctant, Gondorff relents and recruits a team of experienced con men. They decide to resurrect an elaborate, obsolete scam known as "the wire", using a large crew to create a phony off-track betting parlor. Snyder and Lonnegan's men track Hooker to Chicago; Gondorff warns Hooker that if either of them finds him, the con will have to be called off.
Aboard the opulent 20th Century Limited Gondorff, posing as the boorish Chicago bookie "Shaw", buys into Lonnegan's private, high-stakes poker game, being facilitated by the train's conductor, and in which Lonnegan is known to cheat. "Shaw" infuriates Lonnegan with his obnoxious behavior, then out-cheats him out of $15,000 ($348,022 in 2025), which Lonnegan is unable to pay because "Shaw" had previously had a pickpocket steal his wallet stuffed with cash.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: David S. Ward
- Cinematography: Robert Surtees
- Edited by: William Reynolds
- Music: Marvin Hamlisch, Scott Joplin
- Produced by: Tony Bill, Julia Phillips, Michael Phillips
Cast
- Paul Newman as Henry Gondorff
- Robert Redford as Johnny Hooker
- Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonnegan
- Charles Durning as Lt. Wm. Snyder
- Ray Walston as J.J. Singleton
- Eileen Brennan as Billie
- Harold Gould as Kid Twist
- John Heffernan as Eddie Niles
- Dana Elcar as F.B.I. Agent Polk
- Jack Kehoe as Erie Kid
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Universal Pictures, The Zanuck/Brown Company, Bill/Phillips Productions
- Budget: $5,500,000
- Box office: $159,616,327
- Themes: bet, chicago, illinois, repayment, horse race, con man, mafia boss, heist, caper, ragtime, off track betting
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