Based on its advertising, Focus looked like it was going to be just about the most commercially driven, Hollywood production that could possibly be conceived. It featured one of the industry’s most established stars, one of its hottest potential breakouts, a story about conmen collecting huge stacks of cash to appeal to the fellas, and a story about an emotional love affair to appeal to the ladies, all wrapped up in a glossy package. The thing looked so self-consciously commercial that there was almost no chance that it could end up being anything other than completely homogenized and boring.
No chance except for the fact that it comes from writing/directing duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who also made the largely non-commercial and fairly interesting I Love You Phillip Morris. Was it possible that Focus’ advertising was hiding some interesting twists and turns that make it more than just a grab at mainstream cash? Not really, no, but it turns out that it’s not so bad anyway.
No chance except for the fact that it comes from writing/directing duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who also made the largely non-commercial and fairly interesting I Love You Phillip Morris. Was it possible that Focus’ advertising was hiding some interesting twists and turns that make it more than just a grab at mainstream cash? Not really, no, but it turns out that it’s not so bad anyway.
The basic story here is that Will Smith is playing an expert conman, grifter, bamboozler, pickpocket type who acts as the kingpin of a team of other highly skilled charlatans, and Margot Robbie is playing an aspiring thief who wants to get into his good graces, learn all of the tricks of the trade, and eventually join his team. Initially her plans work out, but complications occur when the two fall in love with each other along the way. Or do they? This is a movie about flimflammers, after all, so none of the characters really know who they can trust and who’s working an angle. Over the course of a series of scams Smith and Robbie’s characters find themselves working together, working against each other, in love with each other, hurt by each other, and pretty much everything in between. Where do they end up in the end? Who does it turn out was trustworthy? The hope is that the movie will be interesting enough to make you want to stick around to get those answers.
The good news is that it is, in general. It’s true that this is very much the sort of movie star-driven, story second, derivative studio picture that it was advertised as being, but that doesn’t mean that Ficarra and Requa have left all of their skills behind in order to just make money doing flimsy work. The script here isn’t anything that’s going to set the world on fire, but the dialogue is at least a step above what you usually get in movies that look like this. There are even a couple of quips in here that are clever enough to make a mental note of for later quoting. The movie looks pretty dang good too. While it does share the same glossy, digital look that pretty much every big movie utilizes these days, it’s still clear that somebody who shot it has an eye for photography, to the point where there are an image or two sprinkled throughout that make you want to stop and appreciate how pretty what you’re looking at is. To break things down into basic terms, Focus consists of generally generic material that nonetheless gets elevated from being a waste of your time to being mildly interesting thanks to competent craftsmanship.
The big focus of the movie, and the reason most people will want to check it out, are its stars. Smith is a proven commodity, one of the most proven, in fact, and he does as well here coasting on his established persona as you would imagine he does, but Robbie came into her role as something of a question mark. She recently had a coming out party thanks to The Wolf of Wall Street, where she was good enough to make an impression with the mainstream, but this is the first time we’ve seen her get a big feature role since the world stood up and took note of her, and the big story coming out of this film is that she proves that she’s absolutely worth the attention.
While it’s true that Robbie isn’t yet the most polished performer with the strongest acting chops, she does have a million watt charisma that’s impossible to deny, and she shows in this movie that her skills are indeed strong enough to deliver that onscreen charisma to audiences while standing next to one of the biggest movie stars of this generation and not looking out of place. The girl showed promise for bigger things in The Wolf of Wall Street, but this performance removes any doubt that she has what it takes to be a movie star, in the largest sense. No matter what else is going on in the frames of this film, you’re never able to take your eyes off of Robbie. She’s that magnetic, and if she’s able to make smart career decisions from this point forward, it’s more likely than not that she’s going to become one of the biggest names in the game. If she also continues to grow and develop as an actor as her fame explodes, well, then we could be at the early stages of watching something truly special develop.
If you plan on checking out this movie simply to see how Robbie does, chances are you’re going to walk away from it feeling like it was worth your time. There are a couple of reasons one might walk away from it feeling like they’d made a mistake though. The first is that the romance angle between Smith and Robbie just doesn’t work. There’s so much slow motion photography and cheesy sex music during the supposedly steamy scenes where they’re getting together that it begins to feel like you’re watching a made for Cinemax movie from the early 90s, and the tonal problems make it impossible to invest in their relationship as something serious that you should actually care about. It’s strange, because the filmmaking is on point in most other respects, but as far as the sex stuff is concerned, Ficarra and Requa really drop the ball.
Matters of poor taste also pop up in the endless montage sequences where our “heroes” are scamming money and showing off their wealth. Smith is generally pretty bad about taking too many roles where he plays the flawless superman, but this movie goes so far in painting him as being smarter, cooler, tougher, and generally better than everyone else that it gets downright annoying to watch. We have to sit through so much douchebag posturing about how cool it is to have huge stacks of money and how glamorous it is to blow money on ridiculous extravagancies that it doesn’t take long for it to feel like you’re watching an episode of Entourage. You would have to be pretty tacky to buy into the sort of empty lifestyle that this movie is peddling and to think that it’s actually desirable, and because the characters who act as our protagonists absolutely do buy into that sort of lifestyle, there’s always an urge in the back of your mind to turn on them and begin rooting for their downfall. Focus is generally fine, but if it has any major flaw, it’s that it took two actors who are inherently very likable and it cast them as a couple of jerks.
