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The Sting
The Sting is a 1973 American caper film. Set in 1936, it involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw). The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who had directed Newman and Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The screenplay, by David S. Ward, was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated by brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his 1940 book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.
Plot
In 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.
Awards
Cast
- Arch Johnson
- Avon Long
- Brad Sullivan
- Charles Dierkop
- Charles Durning
- Dana Elcar
- Dimitra Arliss
- Eileen Brennan
- Harold Gould
- Jack Collins
- Jack Kehoe
- John Heffernan
- John Quade
- Kathleen Freeman
- Larry D. Mann
- Paul Newman
- Paulene Myers
- Ray Walston
- Robert Earl Jones
- Robert Redford
- Robert Shaw
- Sally Kirkland