Khoi Vinh’s review published on Letterboxd:
Every time I revisit this movie, like I did with the family last night, showing it for the first time to my twin eleven year-old boys, I’m amazed by how thrilling and satisfying every beat is, even though after countless rewatches I’m now intimately familiar with each detail. There’s a tiny moment when Charles Durning’s Det. Snyder is pulled away from his diner meal by Feds, and I remembered to watch for his quick hand gesture where he dips his fingers in his water glass for a half a second to clean them off before heading out with them. I knew it was coming and yet it was like new for me all over again. This movie is magical like that; it’s a playground or even a theme park imagined from a Great Depression landscape of grifters, mugs and marks, all exchanging snappy patois (“Everything’s jake!”), where every detail sparkles with a halcyon glow, like an old 78 rpm record buzzing with warm crackles and pops. Intellectually, it’s hard to deny that this recreation of 1936 probably bears little resemblance to the actual 1936, but its nostalgic view is so intoxicating I can’t resist it. It’s also a bit sorrowful; for as rich an art form as confidence is, there should be a dozen more con game movies that one could turn to after “The Sting” to slake one’s thirst for the grift as entertainment, but none of them bear repeated viewings in the same special way that this one does.
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