Focus

Focus is the flashy, crass and ulti­mate­ly rather daft new film from Glenn Ficar­ra and John Requa, the writing/​directing team behind the sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­able I Love You Phillip Mor­ris. That movie showed Jim Car­rey step­ping exhil­a­rat­ing­ly out­side of his com­fort zone. This one finds Smith try­ing des­per­ate­ly to crawl his way back into his.

The last few years haven’t been all that kind to the Fresh Prince star. He’s osten­si­bly one of the biggest movie brands in the world, though to main­tain that sta­tus he could do with a mon­ster hit. After Earth, Sev­en Pounds, even Men in Black 3, they were all dis­ap­point­ments to vary­ing degrees. Alas, if the pur­pose of Focus is to reignite Will Smith’s fad­ing star, then it strug­gles to find its spark.

Smith plays Nicky Spur­geon, a charis­mat­ic career crim­i­nal blessed with an almost preter­nat­ur­al tal­ent for thiev­ery. He recruits up-and-com­ing huck­ster Jess Bar­rett (Mar­got Rob­bie) to unwit­ting­ly car­ry out his lat­est scam, before cut­ting ties com­plete­ly when she gets a lit­tle too close to the truth for com­fort. Fast for­ward a few years, and their paths cross once more, this time in the ridicu­lous­ly opu­lent world of inter­na­tion­al motor rac­ing where they’re inde­pen­dent­ly plot­ting their own inge­nious shakedowns.

Focus is a vul­gar and exas­per­at­ing film, one that strives for that par­tic­u­lar strain of Steven Soderbergh/​Out of Sight-era swag­ger, and finds itself falling almost pathet­i­cal­ly short. Riff­ing shab­bi­ly on supe­ri­or works like The Thomas Crown Affair, Trou­ble in Par­adise, and, hell, even Dirty Rot­ten Scoundrels, Ficar­ra and Requa depict a world of glam­orous crim­i­nal­i­ty and lux­u­ri­ous sex. How­ev­er, beneath their movie’s classy veneer lies a vis­cous lay­er of racial stereo­types, ran­dom homo­pho­bia and casu­al sex­ism. In this unsavoury uni­verse, Aus­tralians are sleazy drunks, Asians are incor­ri­gi­ble gam­blers and Mex­i­cans are over­weight slobs. Tawdry jokes about gay sex (male and female) are fair game. Women are tools to be used by men in wider schemes they wouldn’t understand.

In this respect, the pic­ture feels fun­da­men­tal­ly fraud­u­lent. Sure, char­ac­ters sip expen­sive wines in exot­ic locales, sleep in beds with enor­mous linen head­boards (the head­boards in this film are amaz­ing) and hang with the glit­terati at lav­ish soci­ety soirées. But it’s all a dis­trac­tion from the intrin­sic class­less­ness of the enter­prise. The film wants to be a 1928 vin­tage Krug, but in real­i­ty it’s a Blue Nun spritzer, and someone’s run out of cock­tail umbrellas.

Arti­fice is every­where. To wit, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant scenes in Focus takes place in a VIP box dur­ing the Super­bowl. Except, it’s not the Super­bowl. It’s a non-brand­ed, fic­tion­al ver­sion of the Super­bowl, fea­tur­ing fab­ri­cat­ed teams like the non-exis­tent Chica­go Rhi­nos. Clear­ly, they couldn’t get the rights to use the real thing, and that’s fair enough. But in a film that wants you to (yes) focus on the small stuff and grad­u­al­ly piece togeth­er the big­ger pic­ture as the con­vo­lut­ed plot unfolds, this kind of detail real­ly mat­ters. If view­ers can’t buy into the fic­tion­al world the film’s sell­ing, then what invest­ment should they make in the ensu­ing chicanery?

Ear­li­er in the sto­ry, we’re invit­ed to explore the gang’s tem­po­rary base of oper­a­tions, a den full to the brim with stolen goods and dirty mon­ey. But they’ve got black­boards: they’re lit­er­al­ly writ­ing down every sin­gle thing they’re doing in chalk. Chalk! Basi­cal­ly, they’re the worst crim­i­nals ever. You can tell they’re the worst crim­i­nals ever because peo­ple start show­ing up spout­ing ridicu­lous macho bull­shit such as, ​“just do what you’re being paid to do, shit-heel” like they’re sleep­walk­ing their way through an Elmore Leonard pas­tiche. In fact, every­one in Focus is essen­tial­ly just sleep­walk­ing their way through an Elmore Leonard pas­tiche. Increduli­ty abounds, mak­ing it rather bloody hard to give a mon­keys about what’s hap­pen­ing to any­body dur­ing the film’s pro­gres­sive­ly top­sy-turvy narrative.

At the cen­tre of it stand Will Smith and Mar­got Rob­bie: two stars cir­cling each oth­er, wait­ing for the most oppor­tune moment to col­lide. Admit­ted­ly, they come tan­ta­lis­ing­ly close. Their chem­istry is tan­gi­ble and infec­tious, and they’re absolute­ly worth watch­ing even as the film’s absur­di­ty starts active­ly screw­ing both them and the audi­ence over in a final act that’s about as sat­is­fy­ing as a brick sand­wich. The ques­tion is: just how many come­backs does Smith deserve?