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#Focus movie movie#
#Focus movie full#

Nicky has studied the science of human nature his whole life, and understands precisely how to earn anyone's trust, or fool them into never noticing he's stealing their watch, or wallet, or anything they might have that Nicky can sell. He tries to apologize but she doesn't want to accept. But before he begins, he discovers Jess is with the guy and it ticks him off. Three years later, Nicky's working for a guy to give a competitor some false info. When they pull a big score, Nicky decides to let her go because he thinks getting involved with her is not good. He takes her under his wing and things between them get personal. When a young grafter, Jess tries to take him, he sees right through her. They split, only to see each other three years later.

Nicky and Jess become romantically involved, and with Nicky's profession of being a liar and a cheater for a living, he realizes that deception and love are things that don't go together. Nicky Spurgeon is an extremely accomplished con man who takes an amateur con artist, Jess, under his wing.

#Focus movie movie#

The movie is trying to go big, and this is where it stumbles.In the midst of veteran con man Nicky's latest scheme, a woman from his past - now an accomplished femme fatale - shows up and throws his plans for a loop. In Focus, once the team pulls off a ludicrous stunt at a football stadium, suddenly we're in Ocean's territory and the small-time rules no longer apply. The film fails if it's not thinking too far ahead, if the unspoken plan isn't elaborate enough. The trouble with movies about con artists is that because every character is duplicitous, we know they all have tricks up their sleeves and we're constantly guessing the big reveal. Nicky mocks the idea that the gang is preparing for a big score 'where we all make so much money we retire and get boob jobs.' An editing sequence seems to mimic the famous love scene from Out of Sight, until it doesn't. This being a genre film in the 2010s, the movie also attempts some meta-referential winkery. Grifter terminology is in abundance, like the 'Toledo Panic Button' (taking down a partner to avoid being caught in a lie). The early scenes where Nicky shows Jess the ropes are lithe, breezy fun in the vein of The Sting: She swipes a mark's credit card, an associate buys up a storm, then they return it to his wallet before he's the wiser. Robbie has a rising profile, fresh off her role as the tart high-life wife in The Wolf Of Wall Street, and she's quite likable here, even though she has little more to do than seem like she's up to something. It falls to a fellow thief coming in from the cold named Jess (Margot Robbie, an Australian beauty 22 years Smith's junior) to soften him up. He's as emotionally distant as he is great at his job, which is a natural side effect of the 'when people get too close to you, snatch their watches' line of work.

Nicky leads a team of thieves into crowded public spaces for tightly choreographed pickpocket operations, and not even those wallets chained to pants are safe.

#Focus movie full#

Focus finds Smith in full Hitch mode as small-time grifter Nicky, a man in his element with a swagger in his step. The always-charming Will Smith is back on solid ground with this starring role, his first since 2013's already infamous father-son sci-fi bomb After Earth. Writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love.) keep us only just abreast enough of the proceedings to sense that slippery games are afoot, thus building a fun if forgettable romp through a charismatic criminal underworld. The new con movie Focus - not to be confused with Focus Features, although someone really should have noticed how similar the logos looked - works this rule overtime, layering blueprints on top of blueprints, spelling out one operation only to pivot into a different one at the last second. But when the audience is kept in the dark, the plan will go off without a hitch. There is a golden rule of movie plans that goes double for con and heist films: When the characters spell out their playbook ahead of time for the audience ('I'll pose as a dot-com billionaire while you rewire the security cameras'), something will inevitably go wrong.