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Writer/director duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are no strangers to telling conman tales, nor to contemplating romantic entanglements. Their debut feature, I Love You Phillip Morris, did both based on the plight of a real-life multiple prison escapee, while their sophomore effort, Crazy, Stupid, Love, went fictional to look at intertwined matters of the heart. Combine one with the other and you have Focus, complete with the same comedic skew. It’s the stars, not the story, that shine brightest here, however. The former has the requisite charm, and the latter comes laden with the usual twists and turns.
A meet-con rather than a meet-cute sets the movie in motion, as Jess (Margot Robbie, The Wolf of Wall Street) approaches Nicky (Will Smith, Winter’s Tale) in a hotel bar. She’s trying to avoid the untoward advances of another, and he obliges by pretending to be her boyfriend for the evening, their conversation sparking and the two soon moving to her room. That it’s all a ruse is swiftly unveiled, an attempt by her to fleece him – but her mark is also in the scheming and scamming business. The small-time newcomer and big-thinking veteran bond as kindred grifters in swindling and something more, the trickery continuing from New Orleans to Buenos Aires and spanning the Superbowl and Formula One racing.
Places and events are integral to Focus, a film clearly concerned with showing off and creating a spectacle. It’s a technique in line with the characters’ stated philosophy, with their creed – and the feature’s title – stemming from misdirection; “you get their focus, you can take whatever you want,” Nicky tells Jess early in his mentoring. The sleight-of-hand in the movie’s making is in dressing everything up in attractive locations and iconic attractions to hide that underneath, it’s really just business as usual – and this includes the film’s treatment of the parade of shakedowns, never letting the audience into the tricks, and always building towards big revelations. Though the script consistently and insistently flirts with taking things in less obvious direction, this is a standard, upbeat heist film through and through.
A smattering of standout scenes keeps everything moving along affably, all capitalising upon Robbie and Smith’s rapport and charisma, and helping to overcome a mid-way shift that curbs enthusiasm as well as momentum. Indeed, what ensures that scenes of manipulation and machinations remain slick and seductive isn’t filmmaking technique, with the directors staying shiny in look but not too flashy in method behind the camera, nor the sometimes overt, sometimes inspired music choices. Instead, the antics glide by courtesy of bantering performances from a pair finding the right tone of breezy fun tinged with the scantest traces of purported – but frequently thwarted – emotional depth.
The supporting cast also match the playful, superficial mood, among them Adrian Martinez (American Hustle) as a fellow con artist, B.D. Wong (TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) as a risk-taking high-rolling businessman, and later appearances by Rodrigo Santoro (300: Rise of an Empire) and Gerald McRaney (The Best of Me) as powerbrokers involved in automotive sports and subterfuge. There’s no doubt, however, that Focus’ attention is determinedly directed at the central twosome in its lightweight, romanticised escapades, nor that their camaraderie compensating for otherwise amiable comic caper thrills is completely by design.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Focus
Directors: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
US / Argentina, 2015, 105 mins
Release date: March 5
Distributor: Roadshow
Rated: MA
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