9 posts · Newest "intrigue" posts · See All Tags
The characters in this movie about con men are hard to like, all of them, especially the main character's stupid, narcissistic wife. Certainly that means the director and the screenwriter did their jobs well! But even so, I was almost ready to give up on the film two-thirds of the way through. However, I'm glad I persevered. The payoff, in which yet another con is revealed, made the whole thing worth it.
God, this movie is absolute fabulous.
I was initially interested because it had Robert Redford and Paul Newman co-starring; having just watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the first time, I was eager for more from that pair. I didn't feel so strongly about Butch Cassidy that I wanted to follow its director to this film, but then my decision was clinched when I saw on Wikipedia that The Sting's plot took inspiration from David Maurer's book The Big Con, which I read just a few months ago.
By far inferior to that early hallmark of film noir, The Maltese Falcon. Marlowe is too much of a hero in this one, and the plot is needlessly tangled with insufficient payoff.
I watched this as part of my "curriculum" for movies featuring intrigue. Although I've given this a star rating, as with previous entries this is less a review and more an analysis of character interactions to improve my D&D Dungeon Mastering skills.
The idea of watching movies to study intrigue was inspired by this Tao of D&D post, and subsequent discussion on Alexis Smolensk's Patreon. As always, if you care about the cutting edge of roleplaying games, you need to read Alexis's blog. Once you see how much you can learn from the millions of words he's given away for free, you'll understand why I send him some cold hard cash each month to get just a little extra.
My first reaction after finishing Quiller was that it moved too slowly, but upon reflection, I can overlook that: it was like a one-act play.
I'll be honest: part of me spent the whole movie waiting for Joubert's (Max von Sydow) line in the penultimate scene which begins, "It will happen this way." It's the perfect description of an assassination, uttered by a consummate assassin.