Sunday, May 8, 2016

FOCUS - Will Smith the Genius Con Artist

I did not have the chance to watch this movie in theater last year, or it never played at all? Can not really be sure as even if it really played last year, then it did not make a wave of audience flocking to the theaters. Anyway, I watched this in HBO last night as it premiered for the first time on TV (they usually showed new movies every Saturday night at 8PM Indonesia time. So if you are not having any plan on Saturday night, and if you subscribe to cable TV, then it might be good for you to watch a "not so old" movie such as this one. 

Brief Story Line

Movie started with the scene of Nicky (played by Will Smith - Independence Day, Men In Black, etc) who was being seduced by a lady named Jess (played by Margot Robbie - The Wolf of Wallstreet, Suicide Squad) and "found out" by her "husband". Apparently Nicky knew from the beginning that he was being conned, so he even advised Jess to always focus during a con. Later, Nicky provided some inputs to Jess on how to be a better pick-pocket and also informed her that in this line of work, they must be ready for any kind of situation. Even Nicky's father during one of his con did the surprising thing by shooting his own father during a con gone wrong, to avoid them being caught. It was called the "Toledo Panic Button".

In next scenes, Nicky went to New Orleans and had big plans to score during a major football game. He was accompanied by Horst (his 2nd hand man) and Farhad (1 of his best partner). Jess who already made up her mind that she wanted to be part of Nicky's crew, tried to convince him that she was good enough. So as a test, Nicky asked Horst to see if she was able to pick pocket people which Jess successfully done so. With Jess becoming the newest member, Nicky soon felt emotional attachment, which was actually not a good idea in their line of business. Hence after finishing their biggest score and con together, they went on their separate ways.

Three years later in Buenos Aires, Nicky was being hired by Garriga (played by Rodrigo Santoro - 300 and others), a wealthy business man who owned a racing car team with a very good computerized racing system which all their competitors wanted to get their hands on. As part of the con, Nicky would sell a modified system to Garriga's fiercest competitor, McEwen which Nicky would keep the money, on top of what Garriga would pay. By doing so, Garriga wanted to get rid of his competition. In the con, Nicky would act like 1 of Garriga's disgruntled technician and to convince McEwen, they would do a dramatized "fight" during a party. However, all the plan go haywire as suddenly, out of nowhere, Jess showed up and kissed Garriga. The con also became more complicated with the extra suspicious Owens (played by Gerald McRaney), Garriga's head of security. 

So can Nicky go through with this con when his previous love interest showed up again? Is Nicky going to try win Jess' heart again? Find out all the cons until the end of the movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well, I personally quite enjoy the movie. As usual movie involving cons always intrigued us in the sense we are always kept guessing which one is a con and which one is real. We will never know who ends up being conned in the end. 
Even though the cons in this movie are not at the highest level but in the end, there were still plenty of twists and surprises to make it interesting.
I also found the supporting character Farhad (Adrian Martinez) fun to watch and Nicky's relationship with Jess interesting as well.

So if you happen to like this kind of genre, then maybe this one is an option for you to watch. As I said in the beginning, the film is playing in HBO and you definitely can watch it at least once a day during this whole week. It could be fun...

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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