Con Game

By JAY COCKS

THE STING

Directed by GEORGE ROY HILL

Screenplay by DAVID S. WARD

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.

He was. 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.

The 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.

The Sting was not made to be taken seriously, but many people may find it difficult even to enjoy the movie casually. It lacks the elements that could have given it true drive: a sense of an urban underworld, or of the Depression that sucked so many people into it; an understanding of the con man's pathology that goes beyond surface style and patter; a story that depends not on plot twists but on characters. The movie ends up with a lot of expensive sets and a screenful of blue eyes.

-- By Jay Cocks

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