At 46, Will Smith no longer harbors the brashness of his youth. But he has replaced it with something richer: a mature suavity and decidedly middle-aged elegance that finds a snug home in Nicky Spurgeon, his mysterious, charismatic protagonist in “Focus,” the genre-hopping new film From Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.
Nicky is a classic confidence man, a literary-cinematic archetype seemingly as old as storytelling itself. The third in a generational line of schemers, thieves and persuaders, Nicky lives by his father’s dictum that, in life, “you’re either the hammer or the nails.” He’s always been the former, winning people over with his hypnotic magnetism—aka the “focus” of the title—and building an underground crime syndicate out of his talents.
That is, until the girl comes along. Doesn’t she always?
In the case, the girl is Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie, of “Wolf of Wall Street” fame), a pretty young thing who fails dismally at conning Nicky and instead decides to join her competition. While building up her own skills of persuasion, she develops feelings for the emotionally deceptive Nicky, for whom everything in life is seemingly a complex ruse. The film continually cycles back to the fundamental question at the heart of their relationship, and of Nicky’s worldview: How do you ever believe a professional liar?
I was a little worried by “Focus” in its first 30 minutes, which depicts confidence schemes and pickpocketry with a faultless romantic glamour—a perfectly oiled machine with countless moving parts, from classic distraction techniques to fake ATM terminals and subtle credit-card thievery. The movie establishes an environment so frightening and paranoid that you’ll never want to leave the house, lest you run into one of the petty-criminal spawn this movie might just create.
But it gets better in every way, starting with a masterfully cringe-inducing sequence in a Super Bowl luxury box, in which the movie cons us as much as its characters. This becomes the sportiest competition in “Focus”—not the battle between Nicky and Jess so much as the jousts between the movie and its audience over who remains one step ahead. The movie, to its surprising credit, usually wins.
It’s also effectively funny, reflecting Ficarra and Requa’s experience in the genre of uncomfortable comedy; they co-wrote and directed “I Love You Phillip Morris” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Here, though, they seem to find the idea of genre agreeably restless. “Focus” is really a slippery action-comedy-romance filled with international intrigue, the sort of film Hollywood used to make—it’s far more “To Catch a Thief” than the more recent, darker explorations of confidence schemes like “The Grifters” and “House of Cards.”
“Focus” follows formulas, to be sure, but it moves to its own drumbeat, at once chaotic and nostalgic.
“Focus” opens Friday at most area theaters.
