Word: redfords
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This isn't a movie, it's a recipe. The people who put The Sting together followed the instructions on the Butch Cassidy package: one Paul Newman, one Robert Redford, a dash of caper. Stir in the same director, if available...
...Butch Cassidy may not have been very good, but it made a bundle, so what difference does it make? Newman and Redford pass a few facial expressions between them and try to cool each other out. If there ever was much of a script, it can be said to have gone to waste...
...movie, set in Chicago and environs during the '30s, concerns a sophomore con man (Redford), a grizzled veteran con man (Newman) and their extravagant scheme to bilk a big-money hoodlum from New York (Robert Shaw). There is a tangle of subplots, some slothful suspense and an ending of telegraphed surprise...
...doesn't work out that way, however. A certain amount of hot air is expended on the subject of political inquisitions in movieland, but Redford shucks his integrity without reference to political morality, and Streisand manages to shuck him over what seems a rather minor bit of marital infidelity on his part...
...audience that really gets shucked. The film does not actually have anything on its mind except to bring together two hot properties in a period setting for which there is currently a lot of nostalgia. Streisand predictably does her adorable neurotic bit. Redford unpredictably brings nothing to his role but his physical presence. As for the period, it is represented by a rag of costuming, a bone of set decoration and a hank of hairstyling. No one seems to have the faintest idea of the way we really were, spiritually and intellectually, in a testing, fascinating time of transition...