The characters suddenly stop belonging to Earth’s atmosphere. That’s the moment where the movie’s script definitively wins, or, rather, loses-it takes over with such relentlessly constricting, tyrannical force that no air can seep in. In explaining the setup to Jess, Nicky tips her off to an absurdly elaborate scheme that both depends on a dubious premise of efficacy and requires wide-reaching, real-world interventions on a superheroic scale.
FOCUS MOVIE SERIES
Without spoiling it too much, the moment in question involves a reversal of fortune, a revelation that a near-disaster from which Nicky came out a winner was actually the result of a calculated series of events.
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FOCUS MOVIE MOVIE
If movie directing is setting up a scam, there’s an exact moment when “Focus” loses its focus-when a viewer, or this viewer, at least, stopped looking it in the eye and felt his pocket being picked. In doing so, they squander the power of performers to hold the screen doing nothing, dispelling the double allure of two transfixing stars and the curiosity-piquing characters they play. They observe the stars too little, observe too little of the action that they set in motion, and drive it ahead relentlessly. Ficarra and Requa seem in love with their script from the start. Instead, it’s almost impossible, while watching the movie, not to catch it red-handed it takes a special clumsiness on the part of the filmmakers to let the viewer’s focus drift. Smith brings his easy and understated grace, and Robbie delivers a toned-down and sentimentalized tweak on the brash Brooklynese from “The Wolf of Wall Street.” This comic thriller should be an object lesson in focus-in the seductive charm and intoxicating chemistry of a pair of stars whose energy, charm, and skill should suffice to override clichés and keep a viewer hooked. The writers and directors of “Focus,” Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, get the idea even if they don’t quite fulfill it. The movie’s classicism is built into the setup, a takeoff on Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 comedy “Trouble in Paradise,” in which two suave crooks (played by Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins) seal the deal as they pick each other’s pockets with a quietly electric erotic thrill. So when Nicky passes his knowledge along to Jess, he’s the Lee Strasberg of lawlessness, the Cus D’Amato of the con. Nicky is a third-generation con artist, the son of the famous Bucky Spurgeon, the grandson of the legendary Limehouse Kid.
But, seeing an inkling of her potential, and perhaps also falling for her, he schools her in his criminal ways and recruits her for his slick, well-organized, quasi-corporate team of pickpockets, thieves, and scammers. Hypar Pavilion at the Lincoln Center with a rooftop lawn.Nicky and Jess meet cute-she seduces him in order to blackmail him, but, as a veteran con artist, he catches on to her scheme. OtsoNY Comments: Special thanks to Bob Egan for finding this location. The Humphrey restaurant is on the 2nd floor within the Eventi Hotel on 6th Avenue. Humphrey Restaurant, 851 6th Avenue and West 30th Street, Manhattan. Lincoln Center, Columbus Avenue (btw West 63rd and 64th Street) Manhattan. Lincoln Ristorante, 142 West 65th Street and Columbus Avenue, Manhattan.
OtsoNY Comments: Special thanks to Jim Azzara for finding this location. Gansevoort Hotel, 420 Park Avenue and East 29th Street, Manhattan. They split, only to see each other three years later. Nicky and Jess become romantically involved, and with Nicky's profession of being a liar and a cheater for a living, he realizes that deception and love are things that don't go Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith) is an extremely accomplished con man who takes an amateur con artist, Jess (Margot Robbie), under his wing.
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