The Director: Norman Jewison
The Screenplay: Ring Lardner, Jr. & Terry Southern.
The Cast: Steve McQueen, Eddie G, Karl Malden, Joan Blondell, Ann-Margret, Tuesday Weld, Cab Calloway and a surpringly hot young Rip Torn.
The Year: 1965
The connections: Jewison would direct McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair three years later.
McQueen and Weld played opposite each other two years earlier in Soldier in the Rain.
Robinson and Blondell co-starred in Bullets or Ballots 29 years earlier.
Let’s pause a moment to consider: Only someone as cool as Steve McQueen could pull off the name Steve McQueen.
The plot: Everyone gathers in New Orleans to play poker. More to the point, to pit McQueen, the Kid, against Robinson, the Man, to see who comes out on top. Malden sets it all up and acts as dealer. He’s married to a very unfaithful and expensive Ann-Margret. Torn tries to fix the game by promising Malden a cut. Weld is McQueen’s fresh-off-the-farm girlfriend. Calloway sits in on the game. Joan Blondell is called in to spell Malden and needle the hell out of Robinson.
The point: Death before dishonor. What’s the point of honor if your dead? What’s the point of a life without honor?
Also intergenerational warfare and a good old-fashioned virgin/tramp showdown.
Double Feature Fun: The Sting.
Rating: 9/10. The cast, director and authors raise expectations before the opening titles are over and they all deliver. What makes the film great is that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Credit Jewison, cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop, editor Hal Ashby and especially producer Martin Ransohoff for bringing them all together.
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