The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Film: The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen is a weird star persona today.  In his era, McQueen was a big name, one of the biggest in movies, but because of a combination of factors (movies that aren't entirely in the modern zeitgeist, as well as his estate limiting his visage in merchandise after death), he's not remembered in the same way as other stars of his era.  James Dean died younger, Elvis Presley was more ubiquitous, Robert Redford & Paul Newman lived longer and were therefore able to make movies with men like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, & Chris Evans (i.e. the next generations of action heroes).  McQueen is remembered today by pop culture for Bullitt, being really cool, and dying young.  But he made a comparable amount of hits to Redford & Newman, and certainly more than Dean or Presley and he started it earlier in his career.  While he spent most of the 1950's doing television, theater, and B-movies (like The Blob), a chance skirmish in the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra essentially fired Sammy Davis, Jr. from working on Never So Few after they had a fight) gave McQueen the chance to really prove his worth, nearly stealing the picture from Sinatra.  The following few years included some massive hits, all led by McQueen, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and The Carpetbaggers, a now-forgotten sudser that was the #4 film of 1964, behind certified icons of the year Mary Poppins, Goldfinger, & My Fair Lady.  All of this is to say that by 1965, when McQueen was leading an all-star cast of Old & New Hollywood figures, he was already one of the definitive actors of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite its name evoking a gangster picture, The Cincinnati Kid is not an actual action film (we'll get into a few of those to match our monthly theme with McQueen in the coming weeks).  The film is about The Kid (McQueen), a dynamite poker player who is tired of playing big games around New Orleans, and wants to move up in the ranks, potentially even moving to Miami, but knows he needs to beat Lancey (Robinson), the greatest poker player in the city, first.  The film's first half really focuses on the lead up to this, with Lancey clearly threatened by the Kid potentially coming for his throne, while the Kid's relationship with his best friend Shooter (Malden) and his girlfriend Christian (Weld) are thrown asunder, particularly as Shooter is blackmailed by local mobster Slade (Torn) into trying to fix the match for the Kid.  The film's most famous scenes are in the back half of the movie, when we see an aggressive, long-stakes game of poker between the Kid & Lancey, along with a host of other characters, most colorfully Joan Blondell as a boozy gambling diva named Lady Fingers.  The movie ends with Lancey once again beating the Kid, proving that youth and his cool demeanor are not enough to dethrone the champ.

The film's ending is maybe the most interesting part of the picture.  The entire high-stakes game is really something, and genuinely (and surprisingly, for a sports film) thrilling to see who might win.  It's pretty clear that so many of the side characters, especially Slade & Shooter's lusty wife Melba (Ann-Margret) want the Kid to win, which in movie language means that he won't, but the idea of the villainous older guy needing to make way for a new generation is also a trope of this genre that is ignored.  The ending also differs depending on the cut you see.  The one I saw was not what director Norman Jewison wanted.  He wanted a much more dour ending, with the Kid losing a game of penny-pitching against a kid who has been trying to beat him all film, ending with another shocking defeat for our leading man.  Instead, we get a more conventional ending with McQueen & Weld embracing, her forgiving him for having slept with Ann-Margret a few minutes earlier.

The movie's script needs tightening in this regard, but I get why this became storied in the world of poker, as it glamorizes the skill needed to make it in the world of poker, and the badass nature of it.  Most of the young cast is really hot, sexy cool spilling out from every corner of the film, including the end credits with a sleek, jazzy song by Ray Charles.  This might not shock people reading this about, say, McQueen or Ann-Margret or Tuesday Weld, but modern audiences will shocked to be reminded that Rip Torn at one point was a total Chad.  I can't quite put my finger on what might improve this film (one wonders if Karl Malden was miscast...you could see this part being played better by, say, Gene Hackman a couple of years later, and I say this as someone who generally likes Karl Malden), but most of it's great, including Robinson in one of his last roles, and Blondell totally stealing the picture.  As for McQueen-he plays this placid, unflappable, introverted character so well it makes sense it would become his go to for much of his career.