Film Friday: The Sting (1973)

The Sting is one of my favorite heist films, though I can’t honestly say that it holds up today as a heist film. For that, it is too slow, too simple, and too obvious. What makes this film such a joy to watch despite this, however, is watching Paul Newman, Robert Shaw and Robert Redford try to outwit each other.

Plot

Robert Redford is Johnny Hooker, a small time grifter during the Great Depression. As the story opens, Redford cons a man out of the money he is carrying. It turns out to be $11,000. Even worse, it turns out that the money belongs to crime boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). Lonnegan kills Redford’s partner in retaliation and sends out his winged monkeys to kill Redford.

Redford flees to Chicago, where he meets Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). Newman is a once-great conman who is now hiding from the FBI. Redford and Newman decide to work together to pull off a phony off-track betting scam known as “the wire” to get even with Lonnegan.

How this works is that Redford will entice Lonnegan into the scam by pretending that he works for Newman. Newman is running an illegal off-track betting parlor. But Redford has a way to supposedly defraud his boss Newman, by getting the results of the races phoned to him by a Western Union employee before the race gets called over the radio. How exactly they will use this to trap Lonnegan and then to escape his clutches, I will leave for you to discover. Suffice it to say that there are many twists and turns and many of the characters you are shown turn out not to be who they claim to be.

Why This Film Is Worth Seeing

It’s actually difficult to tell you why The Sting works. The reason for this is that The Sting worked for a different reason in 1973 than it works today. Let me explain.

Heist movies are rather a specialized set of films. What you need are the coolest actors of the generation, some sort of scheme that sounds impossible except for the extraordinary expert skills of the “good guys,” a bad guy who is bad enough to make the “good guys” (who are usually shady thieves) seem nice, and a lot of twists. Fortunately, you can cheat on all of this and your audience won’t care, so long as everything is hyper-stylized to be as cool as possible.

In 1973, heist films were still relatively new and unsophisticated. Prior to this, you had films like Ocean’s 11 (1960) which followed this formula, but the twists were mild, and The Italian Job (1969), which wasn’t stylized and didn’t really have the kind of cool cast typical of modern heist films. The Sting was really the first film to put it all together, and in 1973 this film must have seemed amazing. For the first time, you had a cool cast of near-superhero conmen, a villain you truly hated, a cool stylized plot, unforeseeable twist after twist (at a time when twists were rare), and an iconic soundtrack. That is why this film was so popular.

Over time, however, heist films have become much more sophisticated. The schemes have become more complex, the twists have become tighter, and as a whole, these films have adopted a much faster pace and greater energy. Compared to modern twist films, The Sting feels slow, simple and lazy.

But the thing is, this film stands up in the modern era for a different reason. What makes The Sting work today is the relationship of the characters and the performance of the actors. Newman is amazing as the ultra-cool conman. He’s so good in this role that he stands up there with Frank Sinatra in the pantheon of cool, and watching him on screen keeps making me wish he had made more movies. His relationship with Redford, which continues here from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, shows amazing chemistry.

Newman and Shaw have equally amazing chemistry, though it’s more anti-chemistry. Indeed, Shaw is pure menace and he and Newman truly come across as if they hate each other. What’s more, Shaw does such a good job of making you hate him with little things like being huffy and snippy, that you come to loath him on a personal level and you want to see him brought down. You relish seeing him tricked.

Redford is really good in this too, though he shows again that he is a lightweight compared to Shaw and Newman. He is the pretty boy actor of his generation next to two of his generation’s finest giving some of their best performances. Fortunately, as with Three Days of the Condor where he played a perfectly fitting role of an outmatched amateur, here he plays the perfectly fitting role of the arrogant grifter who doesn’t realize how far out of his league he really is. In other words, the role fits him, which lets his acting style work.

It is the relationship of these three and how they keep gaming each other throughout which makes this film such a joy to watch. It’s not the scheme, which is rather simplistic and somewhat dull once you know the twists. It’s not the feel of the movie itself either, as what was stylized and cool in 1973 feels almost made-for-TV lame today. But the tricky interaction of these amazing actors is just not something you can find anywhere else nor can you find it duplicated anywhere else.

That is what makes this film such a classic.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of my favorite films of the 1970's. An early heist film, Pelham stars one of my favorite actors and it possesses the very types of characters, plotting, smart writing and pacing that made the 1970's perhaps the best decade for films. If you haven't seen this one, you should.

Plot

Pelham begins with a group of men boarding a subway train. These men are a strange mix of middle-aged men and old men. The leader of the group is British mercenary Bernard Ryder aka “Mr. Blue,” played by the vast underrated Robert Shaw. Shaw is an amazing actor with incredible range who deserves to be mentioned in any discussion of the greatest actors of all time. He leads a group that includes a man who comes across as a bloodthirsty thug (Hector Elizondo as Giuseppe Benvenuto aka “Mr. Grey”), an old guy who talks too much (Martin Balsam as Harold Longman aka “Mr. Green”) and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman). Balsam is a former motorman who worked for the New York City Transit Authority driving subway trains until he was busted for drugs.

The target of their scheme is a subway train identified as Pelham 1-2-3 because of its destination and scheduled time of arrival. Interestingly, they actually hijack the train from the platform itself. From there, they take it and the passengers out into the tunnel and stop the train. They decouple most of the cars and move off to another part of the tunnel with the part of the train they are keeping. Then they call the tower to make their demands.

Meanwhile, Lt. Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) is going through his day. Today features a tour of the Transit Authority command center for visiting Japanese dignitaries, who run the Tokyo subway. They apparently don't speak English, so Matthau's tour is rather a waste. As Matthau finishes the tour, he hears the hijackers' call coming over the radio. He takes command of the situation and also bring in the transit police. This begins a cat and mouse game between Matthau and Shaw as Shaw tries to force Matthau to give him the money he demands and Matthau tries to solve how Shaw plans to escape from a closed tunnel.

What Makes This Film Work

Pelham is a great film that has stood the test of time. It has been referenced in popular culture, it still gets played regularly on multiple channels, and there was even a sequel made -- the remake wasn't bad, but is forgettable. So what made this film so good? The characters.

Before we address the characters, let me point out a few things. First, this film is really well written. The story itself is very clever. For one thing, consider the scheme itself. Who would ever think to hijack a subway train? Not only do subway trains generally have nothing of value on them, but talk about a trap! Unlike hijacking a plane or taking something from a fixed location and then trying to get away on foot or by car or whatever, a subway train is stuck on a track. It can only go to a handful of places and the tower will know exactly where it is headed at all times. What's more, even after you leave the car, you still need to leave the subway itself, which is easily flooded with cops. So taking a subway is already a fascinatingly unique and clever idea.

Moreover, the film parlays this into a fascinating mystery: how do they plan to escape? In that regard, Matthau is key. He is presented as an expert in everything subway, and he presents us with the mystery, talks us through it, explains what we need to know, and eventually solves it for us. This gives us a bond with a very likable character and it gives a mystery which keeps us focused intensely as we try to guess their plan.

Secondly, the film gives you a really good insight into the world of running a subway. Films that do that are always appreciated because it helps the audience feel like they are being immersed in a new, yet very real world. It's the same instinct that draws us to documentaries, and here it acts as a bonus in the film.

The film also is very cleverly written. In particular, the film is excels at presenting action through words. For example, at one point Shaw tells the passengers that he is holding a machine gun which shoots 800 rounds a minute: "And that means that if every one of you rushed me all at once, not one of you would get any further than you are right now." Think about this line for a moment. Most movies would have had him shoot off a couple rounds. But not only is that clichéd, but it doesn't really paint an image: shooting into the air reminds us that this is a gun, but that’s it. Shaw's line makes us think of each of the passengers being mowed down under a spray of lead. That image make Shaw much more terrifying than if he just shot into the air. And the way he delivers it reminds us how cool Shaw is under pressure. He is no ordinary criminal.

The whole film is full of lines like this.

Now let's talk about the characters. Few heist films give you much in the way of characters. What they really do instead is sell you the actors. Yes, there might be some back-story presented to fill in the characters (and the target will be presented as sufficiently odious that the audience comes to believe that stealing from them is the good moral choice), but what they really sell you is the chemistry between the actors.

Pelham is different. Here, the guys running the heist are the bad guys. They make no bones about it. And there is no chemistry between them – they are an unpleasant lot. You have Shaw, who is presented as a mercenary who worked in Africa. He thinks he lives by a moral code, but he doesn’t. He mistakes his cold-blooded nature for nobility. You have Elizondo who is presented as a psychotic. And you have Balsam who is presented as a greedy old motorman who can’t keep his mouth shut and who thinks he has the right to steal from the city because the framed him for drugs. He is not meant to be a criminal, but he is hopelessly bitter. You never do learn how these men got together or who planned this, but you learn loads about them as the story runs. Even better, you don't learn it in flashbacks or even with direct discussions, you learn it in off-the-cuff comments and the ways their characters react. The end result is a fascinatingly real group who are held together by the sheer will of Shaw and are as dangerous to each other as they are to the hostages they take.

On the other side, you have Matthau. Matthau was huge in the 1970's and the reason is that despite his Droopy Dog personality, Matthau was an everyman who acted like the world had worn him down, but who was ready to be the hero at a moment's notice. He still cared about right and wrong, even though he talked like he didn’t, and he was extremely competent at his job when he needed to be. Those are thing we respect and want in our protagonists. Moreover, Matthau brought excellent comedic timing to the role, and his personality is disarming. Indeed, he is one of those rare types who could talk back to the deadly serious Shaw and the audience knew Shaw would respect his wisecracks.

What's more, every character in this story brings something to the table. All the bit characters who normally exist only to further the plot come with complete personalities here. You have the Jewish passenger who is likely a concentration camp survivor, the trainee conductor on his first day, the sexist who reluctantly let women into his department, the grumpy old dispatcher who struggles to suppress his anger at the death of his friend, the mayor who has given up his chance at re-election, the slimy political consultant, the cop who found a job that lets him read his newspaper in peace and now must face a truly unexpected scenario, and so on. Unlike modern movies, this isn't a movie of main characters surrounded by props, this is a film populated by real people. And that makes the film feel so much richer and it raises the stakes for the battle of minds between Matthau and Shaw.

All of this makes this one of those films that is truly rare today. It is an intensely clever film about a battle of minds and wills between two top men in a very real world. There is no cartoon action, no cartoon villain, and nothing gets dumbed-down.

On a final note, as is so often the case, the setting itself plays an interesting role here. I've already noted how this film educates you about the inner workings of a subway, but at the same time it gives you a glimpse of New York City in the 1970’s. This was the decade of the Apple in Decay when New York was going broke and everything was running down. This film presents that sensibility very well, but simultaneously makes it clear that as bad as things seemed, there are still good people who stand ready to do the right thing. It makes for a fascinating contrast... something modern films rarely understand.
Thoughts?

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