Focus 2015 (Movie Review)

Dir: Glen Ficcara and John Requa
Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie
Dur: 1 hr 40 mins
Genre: Thriller
Rating: 4/5
PG: Lots of foul language. A few romantic scenes and a bit of brutality.

It’s all about deception. You are conscious of only so much. Your mind is usuallly focussed on only a few things. The rest remain just outside of consious awareness. That’s the catch. Where are you looking? Probably exactly where I want you to and at what I want you to. Are you aware of what you just read? If you are you would realize that there were 3 mistakes in the above lines. Focus depicts the exploitation of peoples’ low awareness for personal profit.


Nicky (Will Smith) is an expert con man with a penchant for deception and gambling. He accidentally meets Jess (Margot Robbie) who is herself a budding thief. She tries to rob him but fails as he doesn’t fall for her tricks. She is enamoured by him and subsequently begs him to coach her. She becomes a part of his team and also a part of his life. After a big heist W sends Jess away without so much as an explanation. Three years later, W is hired by a F1 team’s owner, Rafael (Rodrigo Santoro) to keep safe his design of a new and more efficient engine. The con begins but hits a bumper when Jess arrives on the scene. W gets emotionally involved and becomes more focused on winning Jess’ affection than on finishing the job. The story is incredible but could do with a little more editing of dialogues. The cons are well-planned and cause delight. Just who is up to what requires a bit of ‘focus’. The ending is a bit poignant and open-ended. The lead pair is fantastic. Margot is stunning. The film opens the shutters on conmen and their activities and if there is one lesson that comes out strongly, it is ‘always remain focused’.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Great Grand Masti 2 (2016) (Movie Review)

Image
Dir: Indra Kumar Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Riteish Deshmukh, Aftab Shivdasani, Urvashi Rautela Dur: 2 hrs 10 mins Genre: Comedy Rating: 1/10 Comment: The jokes, gestures and costumes are sexually suggestive. An absolute waste of time. “What an opening line”, you might think. But to say otherwise would be an absolute lie. This film is in fact, a great grand waste of time. It’s horrible whichever way you look at it. The story is weak and thrives on cheap thrills and sorry jokes. The actresses are no doubt eye-catching but the rest is all a blur. The comedy is in fact tragedy and the film attempts to play on the basest desires of man. It’s unbelievable that actors like Riteish and Vivek would do such a film. I am not a big fan of bollywood but I still feel bad when I see bollywood making films like these. All of a sudden, I see that sex is being propagated through Indian cinema. The views of sex are changing and filmmakers and actors are not hesitating to take on unconvent...
Read more

A Day with Don Bosco

                              Don Bosco was declared the Patron of Youth by Pope John Paul II in 1989. He received his mission: to be Father to the young, in a dream at the tender age of nine. He nurtured this call throughout his life and never wasted an opportunity to gather boys and direct them to God. He did not do this as a spiritual director, (at least no at first!) but rather as a friend, a companion and a seminarian. As a young boy, he would attract youngsters with his magic tricks, tightrope skills, games etc and then get them to recite the rosary with him or recount to them the Sunday sermon (which he remembered thanks to his prodigious memory). Already then, he had ingeniously found a way to combine religion and entertainment. His entertainment was necer for entertainment sake but rather a façade or an advertisment for religious instruction. Even as a young pries...
Read more

St. Joseph: A Father after the Father's Heart (Book Review)

Image
  St. Joseph: A Father after the Father’s Heart , Hyderabad: Don Bosco Publishing House, 2021, Rs. 150, pp. 240. The book is a compilation of articles from various authors writing about qualities of St. Joseph. They have used the litany of St. Joseph as an index and have put together articles on each of the invocations. All the contributors are Salesians from different parts of India but there a couple of contributors from abroad as well. The book lends itself to be a souvenir of the Year of St. Joseph that Pope Francis declared. Let me start out by commenting on the quality of production. The paper is of good quality and so is the design and layout. It is neat and has an attractive cover. Coming to the content, it gets rather repetitive but that is understandable considering that there is so little Biblical foundation for an exposition of St. Joseph. The articles often reference Pope Francis’ letter Patris Corde and extensively utilize Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhort...
Read more