The Sting

I’m not quite sure if a badge of shame goes out to those of us who have never seen George Roy Hill’s depression era con film The Sting starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and a whose who of Hollywood’s yesteryears. In any case this was my first time ever seeing any of The Sting and I went in hoping that the film was going to look magnificent on Blu-Ray. So how did it fair in regards to my expectations?

Universal is quickly becoming a studio that is losing the Blu-Ray presentation race. I’ve reviewed plenty of their BD releases and the phrase that usually ends up being slotted somewhere in my review is, “It’s not perfect but it’s better then it’s DVD predecessors”. In a nutshell that’s usually my way of saying that Universal has failed to give us what we want as far as a classic film brought to new life on Blu-Ray.

The Sting has its moments of grand imagery and fairly decent audio presentation but it’s a pretty soft affair that suffers from occasional pattern blur and out of focus loss of clarity. Color is a mish mash of off and close too and clarity fortunately tends to sway in the positive. Of course as always when the Blu-Ray shines it truly does so in a way that lets you know that your seeing a far greater presentation then has ever been seen of the film, but in the end the film is far from perfect in that Universal kind of way.

Bonus features include a full color hardback case which contains both the Blu-Ray and the DVD discs and access to your digital copy via code. The Art of The Sting is an almost full hour behind the scenes look at the film which is broken up into three segments where we get interviews both personal and on the film itself. 100 Years of Universal Restoring Classics. You can take this segment anyway you like. 100 Years The 70’s and The Lot. Finally you have the films theatrical trailer. All in all a pretty sweet package that will suffice until later on down the line when the film gets its definitive version (maybe).