It’s relatively meaty stuff, and it’s transgressive to see a mainstream film take this much unalloyed pleasure in crime. In wallowing in luxury, huge piles of cash and luxury goods, there’s a strand of The Wolf of Wall Street present, both films having fooled us into siding with the thieves rather than our true on-screen representatives: their clueless victims. With their office headquarters, precise money laundering operation and penchant for smart suits, it’s easy to read Nicky’s operation as a jab at the corporations that craftily pick our pockets. This feeds into some refreshing subtle satire in the first half. Smith’s bucketloads of charisma easily make the obviously well-off, sports-car-driving, expensive-suit-wearing Nicky palatable to audiences – we root for him in spite of our better judgment. Unfortunately, Focus isn’t half as successful, primarily because we never remotely feel that these characters ‘need’ to steal to survive. An established classic, the film functions as much as study of financial desperation as it does of criminal techniques. Puffed up on the thrill of the game, Jess and Nicky are soon intimately involved, violating the one rule of conmanship – no emotional attachments.įor my money, the pinnacle of the genre is Fabián Bielinsky’s 2000 Nine Queens, which follows a pair of low-level confidence tricksters trapped in a spiralling, high-stakes con. As a distraction for beered-up, lascivious tourists, she’s the best around, her slinky hot pink dress allowing the thieves to strip the punters bare. ![]() These wallets get funnelled straight to an office complex where they’re stripped of cash, the cards cloned, accounts emptied and the money laundered through consumer electronics.Ĭomplicating things for Nicky is the presence of the ‘the girl.’ Jess (Margot Robbie) is a beautiful ingenue thief, talented and eager to learn the tricks of the trade. One thief distracts, another removes the mark’s wallet, a third immediately scarpers with the loot. He promptly assembles a professional pickpocket gang that swoops through the streets with clockwork synchronicity. With thousands of booze-soaked tourists flocking into town, Nicky spies opportunity. Focus is a film of two halves, the first taking place in New Orleans over the week of the Super Bowl.
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