These days, moviegoers are well aware of every angle that a Director tries to do. Therefore, it is not an easy job either for the Director or for the lead character to do the job of con men in movies. However, the writer and director of the movie, Focus, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa cooked the character of Will Smith as Nicky Spurgeon very nicely. He is considered as a third-generation con man. He knows every angle, whether it was modern or ancient.
Except the kind of fair-haired, that was blue-eyed angle, which looked like the creature of the God from the marshmallows and diamonds. Nicky was getting to Jess Barrett, played by Margot Robbie of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. As it was progressing, he lost focus during the middle of a con.
Master
Nicky was a master and was using partners to manage several schemes under one umbrella. He was also generating a tidy profit in the process. Jess was trying to drag him as an amateur con enticing him to her room in a hotel and her husband burst in with a gun. However, Nicky easily escaped it.
As Jess was pressurizing him to train her, she turns out to be an expert in pickpocket. In New Orleans, during a weekend, a clean swindling of $1.2 million happens after an intimidating encounter with another gambler, i.e. San Francisco’s own BD Wong. Here, Nicky leaves without telling a word to Jess.
Three years down the line, Nicky is working with a new con, and engaged in an Italian race car champ, Garriga, which was played by Rodrigo Santoro. Nicky was thrown for a loop when he found that Jess was Garriga’s boyfriend.
Regular Romance Stuff
Some parts of Focus comprised of standard movie romance stuff, i.e. chasing or rebuffing or seducing. However, the viewers never knew what was conning and real. Sometimes, the real looks like real though it might have been cons. The same thing happens when it was reverse.
It was the work of Joh Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who were the original screenplay writer for Bad Santa of Terry Zwigoff.
While their earlier films were comedies, ‘Focus’ cannot be exactly called as funny. However, it is a light-hearted one with fleet-footed. Sometimes, dialogue is subtle. The team of Robbie and Smith make it pretty, testing and teasing each other continuously. They have always impressed with each other’s actions.