THE CINCINNATI KID (1965) **1/2 Typically over-hyped Steve McQueen flick. Terry Southern and Ring Lardner, Jr. have written some good characters, but only Edward G. Robinson improves on what must have already been on the page. Karl Malden doesn't give anything away, and Cab Calloway especially looks the part, but the ladies just fit in. It's tempting to say that Tuesday Weld is only in the script as a distraction, but then what's the point of Ann-Marget? Even more of a distraction? And is this following in the footsteps of, or an aftershock from, the work of Sam Peckinpah, who was fired as director for getting distracted in shooting scenes of an extra (Sharon Tate, who doesn't appear in Norman Jewison's sterilized cut)? I admit that poker's never struck me as much of a spectator sport, but playing this stuff between two sides desperate for a generation gap, you shouldn't really need two distractions. I don't think that any of it would have looked so good anyway, if Jewison hadn't done what he did with New Orleans architecture (and yeah, ok, definitely, the prelude to the climactic card flip), but it's still a quintessential sixties film in promising a whole lot, and then blithely claiming that it must have delivered.
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