The Sting (1973)

This was actually a second-time watch for me, but I’ll get to that later. This was also a second collaboration for its creative team, reuniting Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill, who had all previously worked together on Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. This film also steps back in time, and back into illegal hijinks; Newman is “Johnny Hooker”, a small-time con-man in Depression-era Illinois. He and his partner “Luther” (Robert Earl Jones) pull off a highly successful con, defrauding a man out of his wallet. When they’re back at Luther’s place, splitting the proceeds between themselves and their third partner, “Erie” (Jack Kehoe), they discover an $11K jackpot – one high enough that Luther decides to quit the business, ending things on a high note. He offers to introduce Hooker and Erie to “Henry Gondorff” (Paul Newman), an even bigger con man based in Chicago, who can teach them things Luther can’t. But unbeknownst to them, the man they defrauded was a…