In Will Smith con-game film, the real crime is committed at the box office

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This article was published 27/02/2015 (4242 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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In movies, con artists are usually lovable rogues.

In reality, they tend to be remorseless sociopaths.

The movie Focus is set somewhere in the middle ground between fantasy and reality, disastrously so.

The film’s “hero,” for lack of a better word, is Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith), a career criminal who can pick your pocket or steal your identity.

His specialty is the con, but he bears no resemblance to the more charismatic grifters of, say, The Sting. Put it this way: He’ll have an accomplice fake a heart attack so he can steal the attending physician’s watch.

This film’s notion of a “meet cute” occurs when Nicky is targeted by Jess (Margot Robbie) for a low-class scam in which she seduces him in his hotel room, only to have a fake jealous boyfriend barge in to scare him out of his wallet.

Instead of fleeing, Nicky’s reacts by expertly adjudicating the scheme, telling Jess where she went wrong and where her technique could be improved.

Romantic, right?

It’s debatable if her interest is romantic or purely selfish, but Jess pursues Nicky as both mentor and lover, a matchup that takes the two to New Orleans for the Super Bowl, where Nicky exposes her to a big operation.

Again, writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa dispense with the Sting precedent, wherein the con artists’ marks somehow deserve the fleecing they get. Nicky runs a big, complex operation where anybody can have their cash, credit cards and valuables stolen by a battalion of professional crooks.

But it appears Nicky himself can fall victim to his gambling compulsions. When confronted by a professional high-roller (BD Wong) in a Super Bowl luxury suite, the con man risks hundreds of thousands of ill-gotten dollars on a series of outrageous bets. By the time the game is over, he officially splits from Jess, reasoning that a relationship based on deception isn’t likely to keep its legs.

But years later, the two reunite in Brazil, where Nicky is attempting a perilous, but potentially lucrative con involving dangerous race car magnate Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro). Of particular concern is Garriga’s security guy, Owens (Gerald McRaney), a tough, skeptical flunky with the temperament of a starved pit bull. Jess herself has apparently installed herself as Garriga’s girlfriend, a relationship that puts her loyalties in question as Nicky closes in for the kill.

Like any con-artist movie worth its salt, the plot includes some bait-and-switch moments designed to deceive the audience, but nothing approaching the knee-slapping denouement of The Sting, let alone the more devastating scam reveal in David Mamet’s House of Games.

Making matters somehow worse, co-directors Ficarra and Requa give the proceedings the high gloss of a luxury-car commercial in an effort to offset the film’s toxic levels of avarice with some visual glamour. They also seem to assume the combination of Smith’s charm and Robbie’s beauty will somehow con the audience into getting onside with characters who are, on a fundamental level, reprehensible.

If they believe that, they’re only conning themselves.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca