Grade: C plus

Focus: Will Smith and Margot Robbie Are Light as Air, But the Plot Is All Fumes

Jeremy BeckReviews
Will Smith and Margot Robbie in "Focus"

A breezy, sexy, ultimately empty crime caper, Focus is a victim of its own sleight of hand. It is so intent on hoodwinking its audience and disguising its characters’ motivations that it doesn’t entertain so much as tease, constantly taunting us with one version of events before yanking out the rug again and again. It’s the kind of movie where nothing is what it seems. That does make things unpredictable, since no viewer could possibly anticipate Focus‘ sudden twists and hairpin curves. But following this movie’s labyrinthine structure becomes less a tantalizing task of puzzling things out than a tedious exercise of wait-and-see. When you’re constantly on guard for the next big surprise, nothing is truly surprising.

Here’s the good news: For its first 40 minutes or so, Focus is a blast. The ageless Will Smith stars as Nicky, an inveterate con man who decides to tutor Jess, a fledgling pickpocket played by the fast-emerging Margot Robbie (last seen heating up the screen in The Wolf of Wall Street and set to appear next summer as Jane in Warner’s Tarzan reboot). They make a pretty pair, he with his relaxed handsomeness, she with the pale blue eyes and curves that need no introduction. Their difference in years may consternate some viewers—at 46, Smith is nearly twice the age of the 24-year-old Robbie, and his goatee now betrays the slightest whispers of grey—but his charisma hasn’t waned, and it’s easy to buy the mutual attraction that quickly leads them tumbling into bed. It’s a romance that operates on surface appeal rather than real heat, which proves problematic once Focus tethers its twist-and-turn plot to the notion that Nicky, typically such a cool customer, has fallen desperately in love. Read More

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Kingsman: The Secret Service—Making Violence and Stupidity Look Cool

Jeremy BeckReviews
Colin Firth tutors Taron Egerton in "Kingsman: The Secret Service"

The centerpiece of Kingsman: The Secret Service, a happily idiotic action comedy from Matthew Vaughn, takes place in a Kentucky church. As a bigoted preacher spouts fiery rhetoric to his eagerly racist flock—including an undercover spy played by Colin Firth—an invisible toxin is released, infecting everyone in the pews with a bloodthirsty savagery. For the next five minutes, the church turns into a carnival of death, with the parishioners murdering one another with any and all weapons available (guns, knives, grenades, organ pipes), until only Firth’s impeccably dressed secret agent is left standing. It’s a sequence that sounds nightmarish, but it plays almost like a musical number, with limber choreography and a rollicking tempo. All that’s missing is the “applause” button.

Welcome to the world of comic-book writer Mark Millar, an execrable place of severed limbs, exploding heads, and casual misogyny. It’s the kind of cinematic universe where the hero saves the world, then rewards himself by having anal sex with a Scandinavian princess. Cool, right? OK, maybe not. Yet as loathsome as Millar’s worldview may be, adaptations of his work can at least carry a certain charge, even if it’s not the provocative kind that Millar would wish. That’s especially true when the man doing the adapting is Vaughn, a nimble and fast-moving filmmaker whose fleetness allows him to faithfully recreate Millar’s orgies of revulsion without lingering over their repellent implications. Take that scene in the church. From any sane perspective, it is thoroughly grotesque. But Vaughn stages the horrific spectacle with such alacrity and flair that, as the camera swoops and soars and the blood spurts everywhere, you may find yourself tapping your foot to the rhythmic slashing of arms and the symphonic spray of bullets. Read More

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