Film Review - Focus (2015)

Focus stars Will Smith as Nikki and Margot Robbie as Jess who are a pair of con artists who plot to pull off a con on businessmen as well as regular folk but when they begin to get involved things could go horribly wrong.

Focus is not a good film I'm afraid but before I delve into that I want to talk about the fantastic cinematography here by Xavier Grobet I mean this is really terrific work here and he makes the skyboxes, the pubs and clubs really feel like real places and it really makes you believe in what you are watching on the screen and hopefully he'll be able to strut his stuff some more in this field in the future.

But sadly the film as a whole is a real bore to sit through for these reasons:

- The first is that the script is not that interesting here as it tries so hard to be a new Ocean's Eleven and it doesn't have the fun or the charm or the narrative thrust of that film and as the film went on I began to get very bored with it all.

- The second is that the central chemistry didn't really click for me, Smith just scoured throughout the entire film and just said his lines in this very angry voice which I found to be off putting while Robbie who impressed me very much in About Time and The Wolf of Wall Street was very disappointing, the voice she did made her sound like a terrible actress and when the film ended and her name came up I just thought to myself "You Failed Me" in my impression of Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, I really really hope she steps it up as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad next year but given David Ayer's track record with female characters in his films I fear a repeat of her work in this film.

But the supporting performances however I thought were pretty good especially BD Wong, Gerald McRaney and Adrian Martinez, all 3 of those men are very good and do a lot to hold your interest throughout the film.

And so that was Focus, great cinematography could not make up for a dull script and boring central performances, 1 out of 5.