History Film / TheSting

Just to complicate things, Hooker is being chased both by Lonnegan's shadowy [[ProfessionalKiller hit man]] Salino and by corrupt Joliet policeman Snyder (Durning), who demands a cut of the money taken from Lonnegan. And all the while, the team has to make sure Lonnegan never finds out he's being conned, otherwise he'll put hits on all of them.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford) pulls off a classic "pigeon drop" scam, along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones). Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; it seems their victim was a courier for ruthess BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Shaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, he travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford) pulls off a classic "pigeon drop" scam, along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones). Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; it seems their victim was a courier for ruthess BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Shaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, Hooker travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford) pulls off a classic "pigeon drop" scam, along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones). Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; it seems their victim was a courier for BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Shaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, Hooker travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford), along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones), pull off their latest "pigeon drop" scam. Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; it seems their victim was a courier for BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Shaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, Hooker travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

* PlotTriggeringDeath: Luther.

* ComplexityAddiction: Salino's plan to [[spoiler:become a LoveInterest to Hooker so she (and only she) can kill him. She could have killed him several times throughout the film, or allowed Lonnegan's goons to capture him at one point, and sure enough when she finally tries she is identified and shot by the bodyguard Gondorff secretly hired for Hooker.]]

* ComplexityAddiction: [[spoiler:Salino's plan to become a LoveInterest to Hooker so she (and only she) can kill him. She could have killed him several times throughout the film, or allowed Lonnegan's goons to capture him at one point, and sure enough when she finally tries she is identified and shot by the bodyguard Gondorff secretly hired for Hooker.]]

''The Sting'' is an [[TropeCodifier iconic]] [[TheCon con film]] released in 1973. It reunites ''Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid'' director Creator/GeorgeRoyHill with stars Creator/RobertRedford and Creator/PaulNewman. The supporting cast includes Creator/RobertShaw, Creator/CharlesDurning, Creator/RayWalston, Creator/EileenBrennan, and Creator/HaroldGould.

* {{Mondegreen}}: Invoked in the final bet with the horse Lucky Dan. [[spoiler: "I said place! Place it on Lucky... That horse is gonna run second!"]]

* BatmanGambit: The entire con against Doyle Lonnegan. Had he ever gotten suspicious, everything would have fallen apart.

The film was nominated for ten UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s, winning seven (including Best Picture). It is also one of the biggest box office hits of all-time; when adjusted for inflation, it currently sits as the 19th-best domestic earner of all time according to [=BoxOfficeMojo.com=].

* TheAlcoholic: Subverted, Gondorff is introduced in the story during a heavy hangover but it's a one time instance and he is a ConsummateProfessional, despite Hooker's first impression. He later pretends to be one while gambling with Lonnegan as "Mr Shaw," using gin that's mostly water so that he doesn't actually get drunk.

** The cheat explained: J. J. meets with Gondorff before the game with information that Lonnegan likes to "cold-deck low, eights and nines." Cold-decking is slang for stacking a deck to give yourself better cards, in this case four eights or four nines. J. J. also says that Lonnegan likes to play with either a Tally-Ho Fan or a Tally-Ho Circle, and he "got [him] one of each." This is so that Gondorff can make sure his swapped cards are the right brand. Put together, J. J. tells him that Lonnegan will give Gondorff four of a kind, but something lower than eight, and give himself four eights or four nines. This is Gondorff's cue to swap in four of something better than nine, like the four Jacks he gives himself. (Incidentaly, Lonnegan himself asks his goon to "stack [him] a cooler, Floyd. Nines and threes," where a "cooler" is a stacked deck, and he swaps it in on the cut by covering the whole deck when he cuts. Which is exactly why you aren't supposed to cut cards with your whole hands like that.)

* RobbingTheMobBank: The opening con; a team of con artists (Johnny Hooker, Luther Coleman and Joe Erie) inadvertently swindle a numbers runner for crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Lonnegan assigns hitmen to find and kill each of them, and the hit men appear and carry out attacks throughout the movie.

* SearchingTheStalls: Johnny Hooker is trying to escape a hit man trying to kill him. He goes into a restroom to hide. The hit man enters and starts opening doors to find him. He gets to the last stall and realizes there's a woman inside. He figures Hooker went out the window and does the same. It turns out Hooker was inside the stall with the woman -- she was helping him.

* RobbingTheMobBank: The opening con; a team of con artists (Johnny Hooker, Luther Coleman and Joe Erie) inadvertently swindle a numbers runner for crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Lonnegan assigns hit men to find and kill each of them, and the hit men appear and carry out attacks throughout the movie.

* BigStore: This exact term is used to describe what they need to rent, and later pay for: an empty basement office/store in order to convert it into a betting parlor.

* TheCon: The initial plan is for Hooker to try and entice Lonnegan into wanting to pull a con on Gondorff posing as a bookie named Shaw.

* TheDreaded: Lonnegan, TheMark, to the point one fellow con man prefers money in advance over a cut of the winnings and another points out ''if the thing blows up, the Feds will be the least of our problems''.

* StandardSnippet: "The Entertainer," by Creator/ScottJoplin, is the film's main theme.

* CultSoundtrack: The soundtrack did a lot to make Creator/ScottJoplin's "The Entertainer" popular among people unfamiliar with ragtime. Unknown to many viewers, the music was anachronistic for the time period portrayed; ragtime's heyday was circa 1900 and was pretty much completely forgotten in the 1930s.

* StraightEdgeEvil: Doyle Lonnegan is a sober country-club-member banking gentleman with no apparent interest in women and whose only vice is poker ... [[NotableQuotables and he cheats. He's good at it too.]] His real money comes from his numbers racket, and he won't hesitate to murder anyone who cons him out of a single payment from a single runner on a single day of it.

[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TheSting.jpg]]

''The Sting'' is an [[TropeCodifier iconic]] [[TheCon con film]] released in 1973. It reunites ''Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid'' director Creator/GeorgeRoyHill with stars Creator/RobertRedford and Creator/PaulNewman. The supporting cast includes Creator/RobertShaw, Creator/CharlesDurning, Creator/RayWalston, and Creator/EileenBrennan.

* HandOfDeath: Subverted; it's revealed that the [[ProfessionalKiller hit man]] hired to rub out Hooker is named Salino. However, the ominous hands that show up every so often are those of [[spoiler: the bodyguard Gondorff hired for Hooker. The bodyguard shoots Salino.]]

''The Sting'' is an [[TropeCodifier iconic]] [[TheCon con film]] released in 1973. It reunites ''Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid'' director Creator/GeorgeRoyHill with stars Creator/RobertRedford and Creator/PaulNewman. The supporting cast includes Creator/RobertShaw, Creator/CharlesDurning, Creator/RayWalston, Creator/EileenBrennan, and Harold Gould.

Just to complicate things, Hooker is being chased both by Lonnegan's shadowy [[ProfessionalKiller hit man]] Salino and by corrupt Joliet policeman Lt. Snyder (Durning), who demands a cut of the money taken from Lonnegan. And all the while, the team has to make sure Lonnegan never finds out he's being conned, otherwise he'll put hits on all of them.

''The Sting'' is an [[TropeCodifier iconic]] [[TheCon con film]] released in 1973. It reunites ''Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid'' director Creator/GeorgeRoyHill with stars Creator/RobertRedford and Creator/PaulNewman.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford), along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones), pull off their latest "pigeon drop" scam. Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; it seems their victim was a courier for BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Creator/RobertShaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, Hooker travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

Just to complicate things, Hooker is being chased both by Lonnegan's shadowy [[ProfessionalKiller hit man]] Salino and by corrupt Joliet policeman Lt. Snyder (Creator/CharlesDurning), who demands a cut of the money taken from Lonnegan. And all the while, the team has to make sure Lonnegan never finds out he's being conned, otherwise he'll put hits on all of them.

Just to complicate things, Hooker is being chased both by Lonnegan's [[ProfessionalKiller hit man]] Salino and by corrupt Joliet policeman Snyder (Creator/CharlesDurning), who demands a cut of the money taken from Lonnegan. And all the while, the team has to make sure Lonnegan never finds out he's being conned, otherwise he'll put hits on all of them.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford), along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones), pull off their latest "pigeon drop" scam. Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; seems their victim was a courier for BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Creator/RobertShaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, Hooker travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

September, 1936: In Joliet, Illinois, novice {{con man}} Johnny Hooker (Redford), along with his partner Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) and their mentor Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones), pull off their latest "pigeon drop" scam. Unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew this time; their victim has connections to BigBad racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Creator/RobertShaw). After Lonnegan's goons rub out Luther and take a hit out on Hooker's head, Hooker travels to Chicago, where he seeks out his late mentor's friend Henry Gondorff (Newman), a master of the "big con". Assembling their team, Hooker and Gondorff prepare to avenge Luther by scamming the big one out of Lonnegan.

Just to complicate things, Hooker is being chased both by Lonnegan's [[ProfessionalKiller hit man]] Salino and by corrupt Joliet policeman Snyder (Creator/CharlesDurning). And all the while, the team has to make sure Lonnegan never even finds out he's being conned, otherwise he'll put hits on all of them.