Focus Movie Review

Deadshot and Harley Quinn are in a movie together, something to be excited about!

Focus is directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa and stars Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Smith's character Nicky is a con man, in fact he's the best in the business, and during the movie recruits Robbie's character Jess and takes her under his wing in an attempt to sharpen up and focus her skills in the art of deception. The 2 then become romantically involved and then we see a film which shows us that this field of work and love do not go together.

I wasn't looking for anything ground-breaking or spectacularly original with Focus, I just wanted a fun movie which didn't take itself too seriously and tried to have fun with its premise and the potential plot points which could have developed. The first half of Focus is a lot of fun. It embraces its world and its characters and provides some really interesting scenes. However, about halfway through the film we all of a sudden cut to 3 years in the future, and the uninteresting events start to ensue.

I thought Focus generally had a good sense of humour which was almost juvenile at times, but it worked for the film. I think Focus shines when it embraces the simplicity of itself, and crumbles when it tries to be more clever than it has any right to be. The second half of the film hardly compares to the enjoyability of the first half as Smith and Robbie's romance is brought to centre stage. Don't get me wrong, I bought into the romance, but it went against the film's overall theme. It is titled Focus for a reason, and the second half of the movie got bogged down in romance to the point where the narrative wavered.

I wasn't looking for complete plausibility and everything to line up perfectly, but the ending of the movie was so far fetched that when you look back at some of the dialogue characters shared with each other, it simply does not make sense. Obviously in a con movie you need a big twist at the end but it has to align with what happened previously. A perfect example was 2013's American Hustle, who's twist at the end surprised but also lined up with previous scenes. Focus' ending bites off more than it can chew, and even tries to make relevant a minor plot point that was mentioned only once or twice beforehand.

But the 2 lead performances are excellent and both have tremendous on-screen chemistry, which is a good omen for the Suicide Squad which both Smith and Robbie will star in. It's a sleek looking film with some well accomplished shots and precise editing. It's also flashy and stylistic in all the right ways, for example it uses over saturation of colours in a way which brought the con-artist world to life in a way which wasn't forced or unnecessary.

Focus has a lot of redeemable qualities, but I think its a film which you should wait to see when it comes out on home media or Netflix:


Rating - C+

Thanks for reading,
Matt