The Sting II

Dismal follow up to the Oscar winner with Gleason and Davis poorly attempting to ignite the same flame as Newman and Redford as con men looking to get well and rich. Malden is laughable as a tough guy. Reed is no Robert Shaw by any means and it shows. Garr is passable, but she looks bored with David S. Ward's script, who oddly enough, wrote the script to the Oscar winner. What happened? While the score is catchy, the rest of the film is quite embarassing at times.

sequels often disappoint and are often the poor relation of the first film. However, this is a very under-rated, well written and acted sequel. It had me guessing until the end and had me thinking about what happened several hours after it had ended, normally a good sign for me of a compelling, interesting movie. Completely different cast from the first film but there are no B-listers here. Sets were authentic for the 1940's too and in those days, low-level boxing bouts were ripe with tales of corruption and allegations of fighters taking dives on the whims of unscrupulous gamblers and the movie set the scene perfectly in my opinion. Ignore the low IMDb rating, its more significant for me that there are very few votes so in statistical terms, the sampling is too low. If you are after a cleverly done, fast moving tale about grifting and the art of the con that acts as a fine compliment to the original film, this ones for you!

I loved the first film, but when I saw that there had been a sequel, I was suspicious: normally, they are always much weaker than the originals. And so it was! This film is nothing more than a pale shadow of its predecessor. It attempts to follow up the story of the con artists from the first film, with a script set four to five years later, however it is a much weaker, disjointed, conventional and predictable story. It's not really worth summarizing: suffice it to say that the crooks are back to avenge a comrade who was killed.

The cast is completely different from the original film, and that was one of the first red flags for me, even before the start. If the first film was a nest of first-rate artists like Robert Shaw, Robert Redford or Paul Newman, this film relies on weaker actors because the first ones didn't want to return to the project. And my red flags raised higher when I saw that it was another director, Jeremy Kagan. I don't know him, but I wasn't impressed with his work here.

When we talk about the actors, the best we have is Jackie Gleason. He's not great, but he does a good job, with commitment and some talent, that deserves a very positive note. Mac Davis is much less successful, not going much beyond average. The same can be said of Karl Malden and Teri Garr, who do not shine in their roles. It's very little and doesn't meet the expectations at all, especially those of the public who saw the original film.

Technically, the film shines due to its cinematography, good color and initial credits, which are a nod to the original film. This was very enjoyable and gave the film a really nice family comedy feel. I also liked most of the sets and costumes, as well as the period recreation. The problem is the soundtrack. If the first film used intelligently a series of melodies by Scott Joplin, one of the great composers in vogue at the time, this film was completely unable to do a similar exercise. However, the original soundtrack made by Lalo Schiffrin was good enough to deserve an Oscar nomination. The only nomination, which is still another bad note if we consider that the first film was nominated ten times and "cleaned" the auditorium by taking seven statuettes.

The first movie is a masterpiece. This movie isn't as bad as to have a zero percent on rotten tomatoes. I enjoyed the new characters and the con has a nice twist at the end. Terri Garr and Jackie Gleason are really good. The story is decent and it's a fun popcorn film.

I can't figure out how I made Hollywood so angry that it created The Sting 2, an anti-Sting, unfunny, dull, mouth-breathingly stupid. I actually made the free-will choice to see this trash at a drive-in theatre. I'd say it was back in my drinking days, but I'm not an alcoholic. Go figure.

The good performers looked embarrassed and the non-actors looked like . . . non-actors. I guess the movie got the green light because somebody's nephew worked in the Universal props and wardrobe department, and needed work to justify his continued employment.

I hope the putz got fired anyway.

I sat through this bilge in a noisy thunderstorm. I could barely see the screen and the sound was overwhelmed by the crashboombang of the storm.

In other words, I knew the movie was there, but I missed big chunks of it due to the rain and lightning.

Thank you Mother Nature.