My Ponderings on Cinema

I'll start off by putting my bias up front and centre.  Steve McQueen and all his movies are great, without exception.  So if you don't share that bias (though I can't imagine how), you may disagree with my thoughts here.

Once again, The Cincinnati Kid has a great performance of cool from Steve, and this is being a movie about poker, cool is exactly the only way to play the role.   Somehow, this film pulls off great drama from gambling, even though it does tend to hit the clichés a little hard here and there.  And it doesn't at all hurt that there's lots of screen time dedicated to letting Ann-Margret and Tuesday Weld look good.

My only gripe with this film is that the very beginning and the very end just do not fit with the rest of the film.  This is a very rare occasion where Norm Jewison seems not to have gotten it right.  The very start is a fast-paced escape scene.  It's another great set of action-acting and some stunts from Steve; however, the fast paced action-packed entry just doesn't fit with the slower paced drama of the rest of the film.  And the end is a bit strange too.  It's not a problem with the story; it's just very strange the way the tag-a-long kid is cut into scene.  It's the only bit of the movie with a surreal moment and abrupt editing.  It ends up feeling a bit tacked on.

Still, The Cincinnati Kid is a brilliant movie, and is very much one of the great classic films.