The Sting (Legacy Series Edition) (DVD)

Yet another classic film that I am watching for the first time thanks to Universal's new Legacy Series DVDs is the Paul Newman and Robert Redford con classic The Sting, which won seven Oscars back in 1974 including Best Picture and Director.

Set in the 1930s in Chicago, the film follows a couple of con men (Redford and Newman) as they attempt to pull off the biggest con of their lives against a master cheater in Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). The con is in an attempt to avenge the murder of one of their longtime partners along with the need for a little more green.

What you have here is a young Redford and a young Newman, both at the top of their game, in a film directed by George Roy Hill, a man who only won one Oscar in his career but is no doubt one of the greatest with such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and A Little Romance both of which are Oscar winners.

As for this DVD release of The Sting, it comes with fully restored video and is the only release in the first wave of Universal's Legacy Series to carry a DTS audio track, but as far as special features go, this set only carries one. The second disc boasts the brand new one hour long making-of documentary "The Art of The Sting" broken out into three separate parts.

The doc sits down and chats it up with several of the cast and crew involved in the film including Redford, Newman, Ray Walston, Charles Durning, Eileen Brennan and writer David Ward. There are some really good stories to be heard, most notably those of Durning, who is a powerful looking man in his own right, but he seemed to be genuinely scared of working with Redford, Newman, Hill and most notably Robert Shaw. His comments are priceless.

This one doesn't come with a commentary, which would have been even better than the making-of if they could have sat down all those old goats and had them chat this one up, it could have been one for the ages.

Overall, the Legacy Series edition of The Sting follows close on the heels of the To Kill a Mockingbird Legacy release, while the special features aren't as plentiful the restored film and excellent documentary make it a worthwhile purchase. The Sting is a movie for fans of the old and the new, as this is the caper flick that inspired several of the flicks you see today, most notably the Ocean's Eleven and Twelve films, movies that probably wouldn't be if it were not for the king.