Focus review: Will Smith tries to do an Ocean's 11, minus the 11 and Danny Ocean

In 2013, Apollo Robbins, gentleman thief and deception specialist (his words, not ours), gave a fascinating TED talk. The audience watched as Robbins courteously escorted an audience member on stage and cheerfully chatted with him while Robbins went “shopping” – that is, robbed the gentleman of his watch, cash and more, in plain sight. The real gasp came right at the end, when Robbins, with mischief glinting in his eyes, asked his audience, “What am I wearing?” [caption id=“attachment_2151743” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Focus page, Facebook.[/caption] That’s when you realised that somewhere along the way, Robbins had changed his shirt – he’d started the talk in a plain, purple shirt and ended it wearing a grey, checked one – and lost a tie as well as a waistcoat. And no one had noticed. That same skill, subtlety and swagger are on full display in Will Smith’s Nicky, the hero of Focus. No surprise, because Robbins was an adviser on this film. But is Smith as jaw-droppingly smooth as Robbins? Directed and written by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Focus is Ocean’s 11, without the 11 or George Clooney, and less audacious cons. It does, however, have Smith, ex-Fresh Prince, hero of the forgettable and forgotten After Earth, father of Hollywood’s weirdest star kids, Jaden and Willow. Focus is about Nicky, a conman with enviable pedigree (his father and grandfather were both legends in this field) who isn’t looking for the big job that will let him retire and live it up in a palatial villa in southern Europe. As Nicky tells the rookie con-artist Jess (Margot Robbie), his outfit works small, regular jobs. They’re not flashy. They don’t attract attention. They just make a couple of million dollars in a week, and then split. The trouble with con capers is that the audience is primed to spot the twist and while Focus does manage to surprise viewers at least once, the tricks are just not tricky enough. They’re very modest, especially compared to the kind of crazy stunts we’ve seen Hollywood conmen pull, and there are no stakes involved. As a result, there’s about as much tension in this film as in a plate of spaghetti. Ficarra and Requa’s strength is their ability to write banter. They did it charmingly in I Love You Philip Morris, for instance, and the dialogue-centric scenes were undoubtedly the best part of Crazy, Stupid Love, which the duo directed. In Focus too, the scenes in which characters chatter away are much more fun than the unremarkable capers. The back-and-forth between Smith and Robbie, for instance, is delightful, largely because both actors have excellent timing and very different comic styles. Unfortunately, the chemistry between the two just isn’t crackling enough to distract us from Focus being a star vehicle. That’s short form for the fact that nothing other than Nicky’s character has really been worked out in any great detail. That said, Indian audiences will be happy to know that Smith and Robbie’s kisses and one almost-full-boob shot has survived the CBFC’s gaze. Don’t celebrate, though. No matter how starved you may be, that glimpse of Robbie’s upper breast isn’t going to make up for the half-baked writing. So you have people going to a football game, carrying millions of dollars, in cash, in bags that look like they were picked up from a stall in Linking Road. Despite Robbie’s best efforts, Jess’s character is window dressing in Focus, staying as naive as Nicky needs her to be to execute his fleece-and-run routines. Nicky’s “team” is a group of characters that are little more than outlines, including a large Iranian gent named Farhad (Adrian Martinez) who speaks in an American accent and looks remarkably Latino. Presumably because once you’re fat, all anyone notices is the fact that you’re large? Worse, although Nicky’s given an elaborate back story that includes everything from a gambling habit to daddy issues, you don’t really get any sense of his personality. All through Focus, you know Smith is acting, which is something that one should never suspect of a conman. Danny Ocean taught us that. Focus isn’t dazzling, but it has a few fun moments, one of which is a masterclass in conning that Nicky gives Jess early on in the film. Smith moves with balletic smoothness as he delivers a variation of Robbins’s TED talk. It’s elegantly executed, but you know it’s a performance, aided by clever camerawork and a production crew that will make things appear as and when Smith needs them to do so. Watch Robbins’s TED talk instead, and try to see if you can spot the moment at which he changed his shirt.