*Spoiler/plot- The Sting II, 1983. A group of con artists wish to revenge a friend's death by a mob boss and concoct a 'Sting' to teach the crime boss a lesson by taking his money and punishing him.*Special Stars- Jackie Gleason, Mac Davis, Terri Garr, Karl Malden, Oliver Reed.*Theme- Your friends are your best help.*Trivia/location/goofs- Sequel. Roller Coaster scenes filmed at Santa Cruz Beach Amusement park. Look out for: The famous band leader Harry James plays a band leader. Cassandra (Elivra mistress of the Dark) Peterson is the detective Sargent O'Malley's girlfriend.*Emotion- I love confidence tricksters films: 'Flim Flam Man', 'The Sting' and others. Unfortunately this film is more like a TV movie or B-movie 'Sting' version. The casting, acting writing, and staging is clearly second rate. Watching this plot, you can obviously see that the producers tried to duplicate everything good from the first film element by element. It's just too plodding, pedestrian, and boring. Another sad and bad film sequel that is uncelebrated or remembered.

sequels often disappoint and are often the poor relation of the first film. However, this is a very under-rated, well written and acted sequel. It had me guessing until the end and had me thinking about what happened several hours after it had ended, normally a good sign for me of a compelling, interesting movie. Completely different cast from the first film but there are no B-listers here. Sets were authentic for the 1940's too and in those days, low-level boxing bouts were ripe with tales of corruption and allegations of fighters taking dives on the whims of unscrupulous gamblers and the movie set the scene perfectly in my opinion. Ignore the low IMDb rating, its more significant for me that there are very few votes so in statistical terms, the sampling is too low. If you are after a cleverly done, fast moving tale about grifting and the art of the con that acts as a fine compliment to the original film, this ones for you!

On its own this film isn't bad but if you compare it to the original then you will be disappointed. I only wanted to see it as I was such a fan of the original anyway, but the thing that really annoyed me was why were the first names of Gondorf and Hooker changed to Fargo? and Jake? respectively. This sequel follows the same plot as the original in that a good friend 'kid colours' is killed so revenge must be taken by way of a con. Kid Colours however is no Luther Coleman and as a viewer I couldn't have cared less as we were never given an insight into the character as we were with Coleman. When Luther was killed, you felt sorry for his family and were immediately drawn into the plot for revenge. The hook was lame and if Macalinsky was such a feared gangster he wouldn't have allowed 'Fargo' to crack on to a girl he fancied in a club that he owned now would he? The movie got progressively worse from there. The best bit was when the mark wanted to see Jake fight and so the grifters managed to gain the use of a gym in a similar way to the originals taking over of the Western Union office. I don't think it was as predictable as some make out but 'Fargos' daughter was obvious, I'm afraid.After watching a truly great film you feel as if you were a part of what you were actually watching and wonder what became of the characters long after the final credits have rolled. That is how the original made me feel but the sequel was 'just a movie' and nothing else.All in all not a bad film but when compared to the classic it follows it is nowhere near as good.

Good acting. Good story, but a little confusing at times. Very good photography. Too true of the dark side to be funny. No laughs, but none desired (I presume).