Skin Game

Set in the American West shortly before the Civil War, Skin Game follows two traveling con men, Quincy Drew and Jason O'Rourke. Quincy is white and Jason was born a free Black man in the North. Together they work a recurring swindle: Quincy sells Jason as a slave to a buyer, then helps him escape, and the pair splits the money before moving on to the next town. Their routine is disrupted when a deal goes wrong and Jason is left in genuine danger, while a buyer begins to suspect the scheme. The story grows more complicated through Ginger, a fellow thief, and Naomi, a slave woman Jason comes to care for, with the Mexican border as a hoped-for destination.

Paul Bogart directed the film, the second of the three features listed in his filmography, between Marlowe and Fun and Games. Peter Stone wrote the screenplay, and Harry Keller produced it for Warner Bros. Pictures and Cherokee Productions. James Garner and Louis Gossett Jr. lead the cast as Quincy and Jason, with Susan Clark as Ginger, Brenda Sykes as Naomi, Ed Asner as Plunkett, and Andrew Duggan as Howard Calloway among the twenty-seven credited performers.

The film runs 102 minutes and mixes Western, action and comedy elements. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 2,200 votes, while on TMDB its rating is 6.6 out of 10 from a much smaller base of 36 votes.