Set to the tagline, "All it takes is a little confidence!" The Sting rolled into theaters in 1973 designed to capitalize on the then popular nostalgia for the 1930s and the on-screen reunion of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Last seen together with great fanfare and critical and commercial success in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, also directed by George Roy Hill, Newman and Redford play Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker, respectively, two Chicago-based small time con men with ambition to pull off the greatest con game ever.

When a mutual friend is killed for his mistaken involvement with an East Coast mob boss named Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), Hooker approaches the more experienced Gondorff to enact their revenge. What follows is an extended and multi-faceted sting to extort $500,000 from Lonnegan's coffers all through the artifice of a temporarily faked gambling operation.

Through a series of ever-escalating charades, Lonnegan is convinced of Gondorff's skill as a gambler and businessman known to him as Mr. Shaw, and through no small effort by Hooker who is known to him as Shaw's upstart lieutenant, Kelly. The stakes are raised once a policeman sets on Hooker's trail only to enmesh him in an FBI campaign to trap Gondorff trying to take money from an unknowing mark but the centerpiece remains the effort to steal Lonnegan's loot without him catching on to the fix being in.

Loyalties are tested and honesty is concealed through the rules of the con until the joke is revealed as being not just on Lonnegan but also on the movie's audience due to a plot contrivance concealing an important partnership from the on-screen action. In the end, Gondorff and Hooker safely make off with the mobster's money, presumably to end their lives as criminals and to settle into the next chapter of screen adventures that never did see Newman and Redford reunite in a similarly popular movie.

Filled with spot-on dialogue to mimic the intonation of 1936 era speakers and designed with sets and costumes to resemble post-Depression Chicago, The Sting delivered on its promise of a pleasant and entertaining adventure. Its script by David S. Ward popped with smart men saying smart things to other smart men, all of them masters of acting the part for criminal purposes, and in the details of the production design are a number of points that meaningfully contribute to the film's plot.

For instance there is an important reliance on delayed communications through telegraph offices that wasn't possible in 1973, let alone in today's instantaneous Internet-age, thereby giving the film's action a dramatic tension not otherwise possible without setting the action firmly in its historical moment. At issue is not the question of authenticity regarding events from 1936 but more the moviemaker's awareness about how life was different some years ago. Those differences allowed a kind of criminal underworld to exist without the kinds of advanced technologies and brutality we've come to associate with mob life that also make the movie's con men morally redeemable crooks and likable people despite their profession.

Likewise the film's producers were wise to fill out their cast with a remarkable number of supporting players who layer the film and make its story believable even to those not experienced with the wrong side of the law. It's also no small achievement to note Robert Redford's receipt of his only acting Oscar nomination for this role that demonstrates why he's been a significant screen presence for decades, if not a well-rewarded one.

Produced for a budget of $5.5 million and reaping the rewards of some $78.2 million at the domestic box office, The Sting was also a remarkable hit in an age about to be set upon by the blockbuster in the wake of Jaws. Not only did it spawn a renaissance in ragtime music, but most especially that of Scott Joplin whose sampled opus supplied the film's score, it eventually led to a sequel and, of course, to the achievement of seven Academy Awards.

More importantly from the standpoint of its place in movie history the film beat out four other films for the Best Picture Oscar, two of whom, American Graffiti and The Exorcist, have been subsequently considered far more important films in the history of American cinema.

In the final analysis, and regardless of sheer entertainment value, The Sting has failed to hold up as important film art since its original release. Perhaps its birth, sandwiched as it was between Coppola's two Godfather epics, led to its considerable celebration when it might just have been a good, though not great, film. That is to say, it is a fine achievement of storytelling but it lacks the qualities of greatness often associated with high art, not only because of what it's been subsequently compared with in its own year, but also in light of what it does achieve on its own limited scale.

One would be hard pressed to retrospectively select it the true film of the year when considering the perfection of hindsight looking through the prism of time. All the more so when remembering Mean Streets, Last Tango in Paris and Serpico were all also released in 1973 and failed nomination for Best Picture.

Awards: Golden Globes · Nominated for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture (David S. Ward) Oscars · Won for Best Picture (Tony Bill, Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips) · Won for Best Director (George Roy Hill) · Won for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced (David S. Ward) · Won for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Henry Bumstead and James Payne) · Won for Best Costume Design (Edith Head) · Won for Best Film Editing (William Reynolds) · Won for Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation (Marvin Hamlisch) · Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Robert Redford) · Nominated for Best Cinematography (Robert Surtees) · Nominated for Best Sound (Robert R. Bertrand and Ronald Pierce)