The focus is on conning the viewer…
ONE of Will Smith’s first and best films was as a con artist in the big-screen adaptation of John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. In the romantic thriller Focus, Smith again plays a hustler and shows his familiar charm and charisma. The film plays like an ersatz version of one of David Mamet’s dramas in which everybody is cheating everybody else, but it suffers from a lack of plausibility.
The characters here are lowlife types, pickpockets and petty swindlers, and yet they live in a world of glossy, Four Seasons-style luxury. Smith plays a Cary Grant-like master-thief, poised and debonair. Margot Robbie is the beautiful blonde who tries to rob him. He recruits her into his gang and slowly, but all too predictably, falls in love with her. The catch here is that the lovers are so busy feigning their emotions that they don’t know what to do when they feel them for real.
Writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa throw in some witty and caustic dialogue.
The set-pieces, whether the elaborately choreographed mass-thieving that takes place on the streets before the Super Bowl, or the incredibly complex and convoluted “sting” against an Asian gambler, are handled with plenty of zest.
The film overall, though, is ultimately as tricksy and superficial as its characters. – The Independent
If you liked Heartbreakers or The Hustler, you will like this.