The crooks are the good guys and the victim, the sneering gangster Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), is greedy, cruel and gets what he deserves.

But the swindle itself is the real star of this Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Newman and Redford, together again after their triumph in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, are at the top of their game as they portray the con men pulling the strings. Hooker enlists the help of veteran con man Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), a character clearly modeled on the real-life swindling Chicago brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff.

The movie, set in Depression-era Chicago, revolves around hustler Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford), who’s determined to avenge a friend’s murder by swindling the crime boss who ordered the killing. This is fraud on an industrial scale, complete with fake betting shops and gambling dens and a small army of con-men recruited to pose as patrons and staff. The granddaddy of con man movies, The Sting popularized “the wire,” an elaborate swindle that offered insider tips on race results and assured victims they were betting on a horse guaranteed to win. Here are ten of the best swindler flicks-movies where the truth is elusive and make-believe steals the show. Rufus “Get-Rich-Quick” Wallingford preyed on the gullible in small-town Iowa. Hollywood has been fascinated with the confidence trickster’s antics since the early 1920s, when a silent film character named J. And the audience is never sure who-if anyone-is telling the truth. The tales are tall, the plots intricate and absorbing. The characters are brash and larger than life (swindling aficionado David Maurer dubbed them “the aristocrats of crime”). That’s why swindlers and their brazen schemes are the perfect fodder for the big screen. Like actors and movie-makers, con artists tell stories and create illusions. “I have played more roles in real life,” he once declared, “than the average actor ever dreamed of.” Chicago’s infamous Joseph Weil, known as the Yellow Kid, pulled off convincing performances-posing as bank presidents, inventors, millionaires, and even scientists-in a swindling career that spanned decades. A con artist is an accomplished actor, the star of an elaborate show staged to tease money from pockets.

Old telugu movies list 1950