Is there any modern screen fantasy more seductive than the con artist—our era’s answer to the movie gangster, only happier to work out of a hotel bar than a speakeasy, and more at home lifting watches or hearts than gunning anyone down? In Focus, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa try to fine-tune that old grift-and-romance two-step for the millennial crowd, trotting out Will Smith as a slick virtuoso of deception, whose real legerdemain ends up being the ability to keep Margot Robbie (who, here, has the sparkle and bounce of a new convertible) on her toes, and, at least for a while, the audience on theirs.
And as someone whose tastes don’t generally lean toward the chocolate-box world of romantic comedies—my idea of a fun night is not listening to two attractive people quip their way toward mutual understanding after a misunderstanding about a puppy—I’ll admit Focus gave me more reason to roll with its hucksters than I’d expected. The opening act is a devilishly crisp seduction: Will Smith, as Nicky Spurgeon, master con and walking advertisement for three-piece suits, draws the naïve Jess (Robbie, all quicksilver nerves) into his world of bent wallets and palmed jewelry, and the two start circling each other with the practiced grace of dancers who, you suspect, have both picked enough pockets to know when something’s been stolen.
The first hour is the movie’s high-water mark—a sequence of cons-within-cons, clipped and cheeky, that knows how to let you enjoy yourself while pretending you might actually learn something about the art of the steal. The dialogue has the sheen of good pop songwriting: clever enough to distract, sly enough that you might actually miss the moment you’ve been had. Smith, in particular, has the self-assuredness of a man treating each line like a hand of poker he expects to win, only here he’s up against Robbie’s Jess, who throws his composure off just enough to keep things playful instead of programmatic. For me, it was the rare case of a romantic setup that didn’t feel like being lectured about love by an eager therapist—there’s enough rhythm, enough slyness, that the mechanics tick along with real pleasure.
But then the movie does what too many cons (and too many heist films) do when the game’s just getting good: it panics about where to put its chips next. We hurtle into the second half—set in New Orleans’ fleshpots and fevered football arenas—only to find the tempo jacked up and the exposition watered down, as if someone had hit “fast-forward” on the crucial hands of the movie’s own high-stakes poker match. The sleek plotting gives way to scenes that are all false bravado and narrative heavy-lifting; the delicious give-and-take between character and con game that drew me in is replaced by a kind of narrative triage, all plot but no pulse.
You can feel the script’s anxiety: it wants to have it all—romance, heist, the occasional philosophical chestnut about trust and the impossibility of it—but instead of blending these genres with a high-wire performer’s balance, Ficarra and Requa dump them together and hope some of the shine sticks. The result is a second half that’s a blender of missed opportunities: we get gestures toward grand passion and plot twists the movie never earns, and motivation that arrives, if it arrives at all, by messenger pigeon. Even Jess’s development—initially so lively and promising—gets left behind somewhere in the French Quarter, exchanged for last-minute reversals whose only surprise is how little they move the needle emotionally.
If there is a crime here—other than the small matter of purloined wallets—it’s what the movie does to its own setup. After all the winking, all the elegantly staged misdirection, you brace yourself for a real endgame, something with cruel poetry or real bite, or just a payoff worthy of the careful groundwork. But the film’s answer is a last trick that feels like a shrug: a reveal that lands, not with the tickle of a magician’s final flourish, but with the dead thud of a dealer raking in scattered chips after midnight. It’s as if the filmmakers fumbled the perfect con—and worse, they did it right in front of the suckers (that’s us).
For a movie so intent on the pleasures of the setup, it’s almost criminal how it fumbles the close. In this way Focus, though it might pretend to be a cousin to Out of Sight or Ocean’s Eleven, is really Hitch in Armani—another slick Will Smith vehicle whose cool goes tepid by the credits. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to begrudge it entirely: the first half is too much fun to sour entirely on the ride. Smith and Robbie together have the ease—and, occasionally, the friction—of two people who know this dance better than the filmmakers do.
For those with a taste for heist flicks laced with flirty banter and a little cinematic prestidigitation, Focus is a respectable two hours’ diversion. But don’t kid yourself: the film’s best move is its opening bid, and it never quite follows through on its promises. As with any good con, you enjoy the seduction, smile at the trick, and leave feeling you paid a little more than you bargained for.
