Entertainment

Film Review: ‘Focus’

Published

9 years ago

March 3, 2015

Oakland Post

Will Smith and Margot Robbie co-star in the con artist movie Focus. (Courtesy Photo)

By Dwight Brown
NNPA Film Critic

After Earth, Men in Black 3, Seven Pounds… It’s been a while since Will Smith lived up to his star status in a film worth having his name above the marquee. As Nicky, a con artist’s con artist in Focus, he redeems himself somewhat in a generic but often entertaining game of who’s fooling who.

Nicky Spurgeon – part con artist and part thief – was trained by his dad and granddad in the fine art of deception: Focus your victim’s attention in one direction, while you steal him blind out of his line of vision. One night in a New York bar, Jess (Margot Robbie, The Wolf of Wall Street), a novice shyster, picks him up and brings him back to her hotel. Her enraged husband barges into the room demanding money from Nicky, or he’ll kill him. Don’t BS a BSer. Nick knows the two are on the con. He schools them. That would have been the end of a strange night, except Jess wants to learn the ropes from a master and Nicky is smitten with the svelte blonde.

Nicky works Jess into his gang of thieves. In New Orleans, they pickpocket, swipe jewelry and steal money with a nerve and rhythm that is precision. At a football game, Nicky schemes on a wealthy man named Liyuan (BD Wong) who likes to bet on anything. He pulls an unwitting Jess into his ruse. Once he’s done, he leaves her. Three years later in Buenos Aries, Nicky shows up for a job involving the racecar world and a coveted algorithm. He’s working for a slick dude named Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro). He’s shocked one night when he finds a beautiful blonde cozying up to his mark. It’s Jess.

The cagey film The Grifters, starring Annette Bening, Anjelica Houston and John Cusack, directed by Stephen Frears, set the bar real high for all con artist movies that followed. This nicely crafted and very slick looking production isn’t as gripping or original as the aforementioned, but that doesn’t stop it from being fun. You won’t be astonished, but you won’t be bored either.

Writer/directors Glenn Ficara and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love) mix in enough hijinks (thieves working a New Orleans crowd), violence (a car crash, punched faces and gun play) and titillation (Smith goes bare chest, Robbie does not, their modest love sex scene lacks chemistry) to keep your interests piqued. The screenplay has a lot of twists and turns, and you can’t quite guess where the story is leading, though you know instinctively that a big con is coming.

Jan Kovac’s (Curb Your Enthusiasm) editing is pretty nimble and well accommodates the film’s four acts, which unfold in 104 minutes. There is a happy marriage between Xavier Grobet’s (Mother and Child) glossy cinematography, Beth Mickle’s (Thanks for Sharing) production design and Kelly Curley’s art direction, which tends to favor teal blue. The musical score by Nick Urata (I Love You Phillip Morris) is reminiscent of 1980s hip nightclub music, like the hit song “Ghost Town” by The Specials.

Margot Robbie, certainly tall and beautiful in a Victoria Secrets kind of way, has a tough interior. Adrian Martinez (American Hustle) as Farhad, one of Nicky’s cronies, brings humor to the gang. As Jess sits in the back seat and Nicky drives the car, Farhad blurts out, “You hitting that?” Gerald McRaney (TV’s House of Cards) plays the perfect henchman. Rodrigo Santoro is fine as the Argentinean playboy, but he was much more electric in 300: Rise of an Empire.

Will Smith carries this film on shoulders. His cool demeanor and devil-may-care attitude are appealing. He has tremendous stage presence and he knows how to work the camera. Physically, for a 47 year-old-man, he’s in great shape and aging like Dorian Grey. What Smith’s career needs now, is a blockbuster that can put him back on top of the heap.

Focus is a bit too slick, but engaging nonetheless. It doesn’t give up. It doesn’t stop. Or, as Nicky puts it, “Never drop the con. Die with the lie.”

Visit NNPA Film Critic Dwight Brown at DwightBrownInk.com.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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3 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Oakland Post

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Entertainment

O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.