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Review: Will Smith brings the charisma back into 'Focus'

 
Will Smith and Margot Robbie bring the heat in Focus, playing con artists who become lovers.
Will Smith and Margot Robbie bring the heat in Focus, playing con artists who become lovers.
Published Feb. 24, 2015

For Will Smith, there is life after After Earth, his most embarrassing failure in an otherwise charmed career.

Smith's swagger is back in Focus, a caper not as clever as co-creators Glenn Ficarra and John Requa would like us to believe. Focus is a movie about con artists that itself is a complete con. It swivels logic and loyalties when necessary, borrows from better cinema scams like The Sting, and plays everyone for suckers.

Focus is also a decent amount of fun. Certainly it isn't predictable, since Ficarra and Requa set no rules or values for their characters to follow. Chemistry is the key, and Focus has a baking soda volcano with the pairing of Smith and Margot Robbie, the Wolf of Wall Street stunner who could generate heat with a garden rake.

Smith plays Nicky Spurgeon, minding his business in a Big Easy night club when a blond looker asks if he'll act like her boyfriend. She's Jess Barrett (Robbie), and Nicky plays along, flipping the con by exposing Jess' mistakes. But he likes her style.

Nicky runs the kind of theft ring that only exists in movies: dozens of pickpockets, decoys and relays working to choreographed perfection, a larcenous flash mob lifting watches, wallets, whatever. Jess proves her worth to Nicky and they become lovers. Then Focus begins conning us, over and over.

Without spoilers, Nicky and Jess' relationship spans three years and two continents, at unreasonable facsimiles of a Super Bowl and a grand prix race in Buenos Aires. Lots of dazzling people, none of whom can be trusted, which gets frustrating as we wait for an end game to form.

Ficarra and Requa keep the cons lively, and in one instance remarkably tense. At the Superdome during the faux big game, Nicky gets drawn into risky play-by-play bets with a high roller (B.D. Wong), using money that partly belongs to Jess. The scene runs too long, raising preposterous stakes, yet Smith always lets us see him sweat, which is cooler than acting cool.

Focus is dotted with good performances, even if half the characters don't ultimately matter or come into play much. Wong is an amusing antagonist in his lone scene, and Gerald McRaney deserves more roles like his pitbull here. On the other hand, Adrian Martinez's Farhad is the sort of post-Zach Galifianakis sidekick role that Galifianakis lost weight to escape.

In spite of its incessant piling on of double-crosses and triple dog dares, Focus is a pleasant change from Academy Award seriousness. It's reassuring to see Smith resurrect the charisma that After Earth stripped away, and nice to see Robbie do anything, anytime.

Contact Steve Persall at spersall@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8365.