Review of Focus (2014) by Lenny R — 28 Oct 2015

Underrated. I don't necessarily think it's possible for a con movie to be TOO twisty, as long as it does it with style, which this movie definitely does. Smith and Robbie are both super-charismatic individually, and generate plenty of chemistry together. Yes, he's practically twice her age, but Will seems younger than he really is. Then again, the relationship has been conceived as 'older male mentor gets with young female student', so there is an unavoidable edge of creepiness to it. Not Entrapment-level creepiness, but still. But then again (again), the characters are emotionally exploiting each other in equal measure. I don't know; the bare-bones scenario is pretty typical of the dodgy way women are treated in Hollywood in relation to men, but this particular woman and man work so well together that it seems less blatant somehow. I'm not trying to defend the phenomenon in general, because I really do think it sucks. I just like both these actors so much that I mind it less in this particular case. Anyway, enough about that.

Martinez, McRaney and Wong are all great. It's weirdly awesome, being used to Robert Taylor as taciturn American Sheriff Longmire, to see him go full-on sweary Aussie chatterbox.