Review: ‘Focus’ is a fumbling con movie that makes the steal anyway

‘Focus’
Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Stars: Will Smith, Margot Robbie
Rating: R
3 (out of 5) Globes

Much like the submarine picture, the con artist movie is one of those genres filmmakers screw up only if they’re trying to screw it up. Even the so-so ones — and even the ones that make absolutely no sense, such as the downright acid trippy “Now You See Me” — are at least partially magnetic, coasting on the charms of people hatching elaborate fleeces on marks, on each other and especially on the audience, who come prepared to be gullible. “Focus” is more ambitious. It aspires to the likes of the grotesquely underrated Julia Roberts-Clive Owen-starring “Duplicity”: a con movie in which professional liars fall for each other and only wind up wondering if they really can love at all. That may sound soapy, but in this profession it plays like existential dread — a job that by definition requires eternal loneliness.

“Focus” doesn’t get as far as “Duplicity” (which is seriously a masterpiece). It’s much too sloppy, especially in its middle section, lacking the precision and pitilessness required to perform the elaborate trick it most desires. It wants to be a knowing breakdown of the con movie and a silly con movie at the same time. Instead it waffles between the two. But again, even a rickety con movie is still engaging, and this at least has a unique hook: one of our grifters isn’t very good. In the opening, Margot Robbie’s Jess tries to fleece a guy at a bar. He turns out to be Nicky (Will Smith), who’s been doing this so long he doesn’t remember what came before. She begs him for tips on how to improve his game, he agrees, and a romance ensues — or what appears to be a romance, and one that will take several hair-pin, globe-trotting turns to suss out.

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The best scene in “Focus” comes relatively early — a truly sneaky one that starts off unassuming, picks up steam slowly and then escalates, step by step, before one has realized. Its explanation might not pass water, but the thrill is in the build — the moment when we suddenly realize we’ve been watching a killer set piece without realizing it. The filmmakers are Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and this isn’t their first scam picture; they made “I Love You Philip Morris,” whose fraudster — a real-life serial prison escapee played in full-on human cartoon mode by Jim Carrey — put the ones here to shame. “Crazy Stupid Love” played with more subdued, and in ways sneakier, elaborate grifts, with at least two shocking reveals made all the funnier because they should have been obvious.

And yet “Focus” is closer to Robbie’s character than Smith’s seasoned pro. It’s like Ficarra and Requa are working in reverse, making the masterful “Philip Morris” first, then their fumbling piece of apprenticeship after. That doesn’t mean “Focus” doesn’t make the steal anyway. It’s like a thief you see from a mile away, who telegraphs his or her every move, and still steals your wallet. The build-ups to the reveals tend to be only so-so, but when the reveals come they’re delightful anyway. It knows — much as M. Night Shyamalan did circa “The Sixth Sense” — that it doesn’t matter how badly you mess up, long as you nail your big finish.

It’s not so much the construction of “Focus”’s big cons that kill so much as the sudden tonal shifts. Most of the time this oozes lounge music cool, shot in warm, sleepy colors with lighting so dim our leads’ faces are often barely visible. When it goes in for the kill, it suddenly turns comic — closer to “Philip Morris” and the filmmakers’ script for “Bad Santa.” The shift is what seals the deal, not the specifics of what we saw.

There’s another major grift in “Focus”: It’s the way the film is owned not by its longtime star but by it rising star. Smith is laidback, channeling Golden Age movie star cool. But he’s too chill, and he’s not a great fit for Robbie, who is all blustery pep and kook, barely able to contain her childlike glee at stumbling into this world of professional thieves. They don’t really connect, but then they shouldn’t: by requirement of his profession, Nicky is supposed to be emotionally unavailable. And in any case Smith is not having his movie stolen from him so much as relinquishing controls to his budding co-star. Robbie doesn’t just take it, she runs with it and doesn’t look back.