There is simply no more entertaining poker scene ever filmed than the above match-up between Paul Newman and Robert Shaw in ‘The Sting’ (1973). Newman commands the scene from the moment before he enters the room–he takes a beat, exhales and preps himself to go on stage like any good actor would–to the ridiculously delightful climax (‘you won’t be able to get a game of Jacks’!) where he out-cons the con. You don’t need to know how to play poker to follow this scene which is quite simply shot–no dollying around the table, no overhead atmospheric angles–and edited within an inch of its life. Even the sound track–the perfectly cued locomotive train whistle when Newman’s cards are revealed at the end–is perfection. By the way, I watched the whole movie rather recently and it holds up beautifully. I even forgave it for the dreadful anachronism of using turn of the century Scott Joplin music for a story set in the 1930s. It certainly didn’t hurt the film. At the time, though, I was one pissed off ten year old—I appeared to be the only person in fourth grade who knew that ‘The Entertainer’ was ‘The Entertainer’ and not some song called ‘The Sting.’