If you’ve seen even an ounce of the film’s marketing, before you even step into the theater you’re aware Focus is a conman “thriller” and so you’re going to be looking for clues as to what’s really going on. Hell, the title alone is basically daring you to try and figure it out before the “big reveal”. Writer/director duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are clearly aware of this and you can almost see the wheels turning as they try and set the audience up for what I assume they believe is a whopper of a finale. And, in all honesty, I would be fine with how Focus ended had it only not betrayed the character traits it establishes along the way and had it not been so lazy in setting up the relationship between its two leads.
Will Smith plays Nicky, a hot shot conman that other members in his trade seem to not only know his name, but know of his dad. One such person is Jess (Margot Robbie), a newbie who finds herself attempting to pull one over on Nicky, a con he’s onto before she even invites him up to her hotel room. See, he’s that good and he’s consistently proving it and yet you just know he’s going to let his guard down and let love in. After all, this is Margot Robbie, the blonde from The Wolf of Wall Street and she’s all dolled up and meant to move some blood. And this is where the film suffers the most, not only are the characters con artists, but so is the film.
Focus is glossy and manufactured to the point it’s as fake as the characters it’s attempting to portray. Nicky and Jess know each other for about three days (or maybe it was a week, I don’t know) and, what, they fall in love? Then the story separates them for three years and… To say more would be to give too much away, but suffice to say, if Nicky’s as good as we’re lead to believe, not only is the second half of this movie improbable, it’s as stupid as it could possibly be and it assumes it’s audience would be equally stupid for going along with it.
I know the thought process, just throw up a twisty tale and if the audience can’t figure out what’s really going on before it’s revealed they’ll be so surprised by what happens they’ll forget how dumb the journey was in getting there. Forgiveness is earned and this movie earns nothing. It tells us everything and shows us nothing.
Who is Nicky? Just some con man with daddy issues who wears $3,000 suits, living the life that’s oh-so-cool. Who is Jess? Just another con artist with a specialty in watches, a line Robbie delivers late in the film that I’d say is the actual highlight of the entire feature. Why do we care about either of these two people? Because they’re the leads in the movie. Do we care about their relationship? Not one bit. So, when Nicky is knee deep in a con in Buenos Aires and Jess shows up you think to yourself, that’s quite the coincidence, but when it comes to Nicky is anything coincidental? That’s a question I’d like to ask Ficarra and Requa, because I’m not sure even they would have a satisfying answer.
Xavier Grobet serves as the film’s director of photography, giving it a high contrast polished look that has top shelf bottles glowing neon blue and retina burning colors popping off the screen. Focus has the look of a Michael Bay production without the explosions and sex appeal and where a film from Bay is separated from the likes of Ficarra and Requa is that Bay almost exclusively directs stories about empty and shallow people whereas these two don’t seem to know what they’ve gotten themselves into… and they wrote the script!
Ficarra and Requa are a curious duo as their films all seem to suffer once they reach a certain point. I Love You Phillip Morris was essentially the same movie told twice and Crazy, Stupid, Love. doesn’t know when to end, going on for damn near 30 minutes too long. Here they manage to offer a decent enough set up, establishing Nicky as conman extraordinaire and Jess as the energetic protege, but where it goes from there almost feels like an episode in a second-rate, primetime television show where you’re asked to tune in to see what kind of hijinks Nick and Jess get up to next week. No thanks.
And as far as the performances go, Smith seems to have groomed his acting career to the point his characters all dwell on this fake, heightened plain of existence. He seems too perfect, too controlled and too affected. Early on it seems it might work, enough to keep you off balance as to what’s really going on inside, but as the film wears on it becomes evident there’s nothing there and all of it feels false. It’s impossible to root for or against such a character and to simply watch him exist isn’t rewarding at all.
Robbie comes away relatively unscathed. There isn’t much for her to do other than play the blonde beauty, a role she has no issue with whatsoever, and the supporting cast, which includes Rodrigo Santoro, Gerald McRaney and Adrian Martinez offer very little, though Martinez does get a few chuckles as Nicky’s tech-savvy friend and peer.
A good conman film can, and should be fun, but there is little fun to Focus. It seems more interested in being cool than entertaining. I think we’re meant to want to be these people, but I’d prefer to want to hang out with such shysters rather than be them. After all, they’re criminals, and we should be drawn to like them before we want to be them. Too bad for Focus, but my interest in the characters and the film is pretty much nil.
