Focus

Plot synopsis:
Seasoned con-man Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith) goes to an upscale restaurant, where an inexperienced grifter, Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie), seduces him, and then pretends they've been caught by her jealous husband. When the deception fails, Nicky advises them never to lose focus when faced with unexpected situations. Jess finds him in another nightclub a few days later and convinces Nicky to become her mentor. Nicky tells her about how his father, a con man named Bucky Spurgeon, was forced to shoot his grandfather when a con went wrong, a maneuver he calls "the Toledo Panic Button".
Jess follows Nick to New Orleans, where she is introduced to Nicky's crew as well, including the obese and profane Farhad (Adrian Martinez). She picks a few pockets as a test, and soon Nicky and Jess develop a romantic relationship, upsetting Nicky, who was taught by his father to never become emotionally involved with anyone in their line of business. At the 17th Associated Football Franchise of America Championship Game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Nicky gets into a round of increasingly extravagant bets with gambler Liyuan Tse (B.D. Wong), eventually losing all of the money the crew has earned.
To win it back, Nicky asks Tse to pick any player on or off the field and says that Jess will guess the number picked. A distraught Jess scans the field and notices Farhad wearing jersey number 55 and realizes it is another con. They take Tse for millions of dollars. Nicky explains to Jess how Tse had been programmed to pick 55 since he arrived, with subtle, subconscious prompts throughout his day. Afterwards, Nicky, wary of his growing emotional involvement, leaves Jess by the side of the road with her cut. He instructs the driver to take her to the airport. Jess cries as her limo drives off, leaving Nicky to climb into another waiting car.
Three years later, Nicky is in Buenos Aires, working for billionaire motorsport team owner Rafael Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro). Garriga needs to beat a team headed by Australian businessman McEwen (Robert Taylor) to win the championship. Nicky will pretend to be a disgruntled technician on Garriga's team willing to sell Garriga's custom fuel use algorithm EXR. Instead he will sell McEwen a bogus version which will slow their car down during the race. At a pre-race party, Nicky runs into Jess, who is now Garriga's girlfriend. After faking heavy drinking upon seeing Jess, Nicky has a convincing fight with Garriga in public and after being thrown out, is recruited by McEwen to provide the component.
Nicky begins pursuing Jess again, and they eventually rekindle their relationship. The head of Garriga's security entourage, Owens (Gerald McRaney), is suspicious and narrowly misses catching the two together. Nicky delivers the component to McEwen for three million euros but also sells it to the other teams for similar amounts.
Nicky and Jess attempt to return to the United States together. However, they are caught by Garriga's men and taken to Garriga's garage. Jess is bound and gagged whilst Nicky is given a beating. Nicky has actually sold the real EXR to all of the various teams. Garriga is convinced that Jess had something to do with Nicky gaining access to EXR and begins to suffocate Jess by holding her nose. In order to save Jess, Nicky explains that he gained access to EXR through tricking Jess into believing he still had feelings for her. That the necklace he had given to Jess was equipped to secretly record Garriga's password and login information. He explains that Jess was conned and knew nothing about this. However, Jess then reveals that she was only trying to seduce Garriga in order to steal his valuable watch and to make Nicky jealous.
Nicky promises to come clean in order to spare Jess's life but Owens shoots him in the chest, causing a horrified Garriga to leave. Owens then reveals himself to be Nicky's father, Bucky, and assures Jess that he avoided any major arteries. He simply employed the "Toledo Panic Button." Bucky then tapes up Nicky's wounds and draws excess blood out of his son's chest with a metal plunger so that he can breathe again. They flee the garage in Garriga's vehicle.
Bucky drives Nicky and Jess to the hospital to treat Nicky's punctured lung and departs with Nicky's money as a reminder of the consequences of losing focus. After he leaves, Nicky notices that Jess snatched Garriga's watch before he left the warehouse, and a smiling Nicky and Jess then go into the hospital together.

Tags: suspenseful

Review:
Paymer's even handed portrayal keeps Finklestein from becoming a stereotype or someone whose sole purpose is to engender sympathy, making his one of the strongest performances in the film.The tight editing and close-cropped cinematography make for a clean picture with few distractions, and mixes an air of claustrophobia in with the small town USA feel - it is simultaneously comforting and disturbing.
Most people attending this film will have no idea of the great novel by Arthur Miller that is the basis of it.
The cinematography in this brilliant and atmospheric film, directed with sure hand by Neil Slavin, kept reminding me of some Edward Hopper's paintings, especially a sequence at the beginning of the film when Newman steps outside a building and the night shot when he and his wife are being followed with long black shadows behind the couple, menacing and anticipating the confrontation with the bullies.
Laura Dern, David Paymer, and especially Meat Loaf, who infuses incredible depth to the bully-next-door, are excellent, but they all pale in comparison with the stellar turn of William H.
His WASP-ish everyman character in 1943 (during the war) comes under attack after he gets a pair of new eyeglasses, which apparently makes him "look Jewish." His Americanism is questioned, his garbage is overturned, is forced to quit his job, he gets thrown out of a union rally when he fails to stand up and clap, he and his wife get roughed up by thugs on the street at night.
William Macy, David Paymer, Laura Dern, and Meat Loaf Aday are all fine in their roles.
Others' main criticism of this film--namely that Macy suddenly looks Jewish upon donning his glasses--is misplaced.
The glasses are just the little bit of change needed to CONVINCE others he's a Jew. The scene in which he says to his boss, (paraphrasing) "but you KNOW what my background is," along with another discussion with his mother, suggests that he's had to fight this same assumption in the past.
Kazan, incidentally, directed "Gentlemen's Agreement.""Focus," which is showing in remarkably few theaters (only two in Manhattan and I wouldn't bet on a long run) both exaggerates and encapsulates a strain of anti-Semitism in New York City during the Second World War that, even today, few who recall it say much about its pervasiveness.The War Department was discomfited to learn through surveys that a surprising minority of servicemen thought the war was being fought for Jewish interests or that actually it had been caused by Jews.
Macy, and his glamorous-in-a-forties-way, also mistaken as Jewish, bride, Laura Dern, didn't exist in New York City.
Meat Loaf's character, Fred, has known Lawrence for many years, and yet when the time comes, at the bidding of his fanatical supporters, he allows them to attack a man who is not part of their "target" group.
I once conducted an experiment in a role-playing game, and was shocked to see how normal and level-headed people welcomed the creation of an oppressive police state - which would ultimate threaten them all - because it crept in in stages.Fred is the start, his LA friends and preacher idol are the catalyst which pushes his neighbours over the edge into violence without stopping to think that what they are doing in wrong.The relationship between Lawrence and Finkelstein, the Jewish shopkeeper is a fascinating one, because Lawrence misses the point almost until the end: if the bigots force Finkelstein out, where is he to go?
One of Arthur Miller's finest works, Focus, comes to the screen and while there was a lot to like about the movie, some of it seemed like it was almost unreal (though I'm not sure if that's in a good or bad way).
Macy, great as always, plays Lawrence Newman, average Joe and good guy in Brooklyn, NY in the early 1940's who finds he needs a new pair of specs.
Lawrence tries to ignore the ignorance and bigotry in his neighborhood against the Jewish people, but with a string of events involving his neighbors (Meat Loaf, David Paymer), and a new girlfriend (Laura Dern in one of her best performances) who knows what trouble Lawrence is in, push him into the conflict of his life.Often, Focus, delivers a poignant, startling and smart story in showing a character with so much at stake it is making him insane.
This movie tells the story of prejudice against jews in New York City, during World War II.
Secondly I have to confess that I am always highly suspicious of movies which depict actions that are supposed to have happened more than fifteen years before production and try to create an authentic setting.That much said, I would like to explain why this film disappointed me so deeply.
Instead we have performances of brilliant acting talents such as Macy (at one time absurdly, "artfully" distorted like a comic book character), Paymer, Dern and Meat Loaf, clean sets with theme park quality, flawless fotography, brilliant colours.
However, knowing what a great playwright Arthur Miller is, I doubt that his original play was very much like the movie.
Macy, Laura Dern and David Paymer just can't create an effective story with the material here..
Definitely an original movie with good acting, but one which asks us to suspend belief just a little too often, and yet seems strangely relevant to the times we are living in..
"Focus" tells of a bland and nonconfrontational man (Macy) who buys a pair of eye glasses which make him look Jewish after which be becomes the object of antisemitic hostility, etc, blaa, blaa.
Perhaps that is the romantic image many Americans have of the time this film is set, as it is in the middle of the War, Macy has returned from the war (His neighbor asks "Hey, is it true you got a Fritz over there?") and is trying to get on with his life but one day he gets a new pair of glasses (hence the name) and sees things clearly as the surrounding situation reveals itself to be one of rabid anti-semitism, and Macy and Dern could wrapped up in it.
In 2005, has undergone a complete reversal, with average citizens who have taken patriotism and religion as their unifier supporting the Republican Party and viewing organized labor as part of left-wing 'unpatriotic' America.A great picture to watch, if you care to see the friendly, timid and meek Macy (played beautifully by him) get caught in the carnage of race and hate in the mid 40's in NYC.A tough, emotionally charged film..
The first reviewer is right - In this movie we see ourselves, snuggling up to the majority, being agreeable, trying to stay out of trouble, just trying to live our lives, and we see how easily these very human traits, so fundamental to the functioning of society, can lead us to become complicit in a great evil.The story is set during World War II, with the radio, newspapers and movies reminding us of Hitler's attacks on Jews to underscore the irony of the same kind of violent anti-semitism taking place in America.
At times that seemed a little heavy-handed to me.It feels more like a play than a movie, but it's so thought-provoking that such quibbles mean little.
Larry has lived an uneventful life until middle age; yet all it takes is his beginning to wear a pair of spectacles for everyone - EVERYONE - to, at the first glance, take him for a Jew. I willingly suspended disbelief because the plot kept me moving forward, but the implausibility did bother me throughout the film.
(And, quite frankly, I didn't understand why his wife was also taken for a Jew. Larry seemed to think so because her name was "Hart." And later when he married her, I don't know why his neighbours assumed she was Jewish.) For the first part of the film I wondered if there were going to be elements of fantasy.
The movie called "Focus" stars William H.Macy (who happens to be one of my favorite actors) and Laura Dern.
We can actually see his myopia (I wonder if Macy was able to see a single thing while making this film!), and experience it figuratively.
Lawrence hooks up with a pretty lady named Gertrude Hart (Laura Dern), and because she is also mistakenly assumed to be Jewish, this merely adds to his problems.Arthur Millers' 1945 novel gets adapted for the screen by screenwriter Kendrew Lascelles, and director Neal Slavin, an award winning photographer making his filmmaking debut.
This film, based on a strong story written by Arthur Miller in 1947 finally got to the screen in 2001, but it left me wondering what had happened to the screenplay adaptation?.
The somewhat over the top floozy treatment given to the Laura Dern character and the intense attention paid to William Macy's circular, horn rimed glasses (very common in those days) seemed out of kilter.
Many other works have given more thoughtful handling to this subject, among these were James Hilton's (precursor to the war) examination of propaganda fueled hatred in the 1939 W.Bros film: "We Are Not Alone" ~ and in 1947 20th Cent Fox turned Laura Hobson's novel: "Gentlemans Agreement" into a quite successfully adapted screenplay."Focus" has the odd interesting moment but unfortunately not enough of them to be successful.
Set in the Lush Technicolor World of the War Years, this is a Film from an Arthur Miller Novel Written Contemporaneously and Brought to the Screen Over Fifty Years Later.
Laura Dern as Macy's Wife (also mistaken for a Jew) is also a Suspension of Disbelief the Movie Never Makes Clear.
Macy does an admirable job and his performance becomes the basic spice of atmosphere.Laura Dern is not a surprise but the art to use the ambiguity of her character is a real virtue.
Based on a novel by playwright Arthur Miller, FOCUS goes deep in a subtle, parabolic way about the danger and ultimate silliness of ethnic/religious/racial/etc prejudice, how public perception and treatment can be radically changed merely by the style of someone's new eyeglasses, and so on.
FOCUS truly captures the 1940s: It doesn't just show the setting--It puts you right in it.The characterization of protagonist Lawrence Newman and William Gacy's performance as same are a little flat: He's a bit too much of a quintessential white, nerdy, mainline Anglo-Saxon Protestant office worker.
Otherwise, most of the acting is quite impressive, with excellent performances by Laura Dern as Newman's new-found love and former rock star "Meatloaf" as Newman's go-with-the-majority Teamster neighbor..
Exposing antisemitism on the 1943 home front, this film version of an Arthur Miller book, comes across as somewhat preachy, yet the fine acting and flawless wartime community setting cannot be denied.
Macy gives another patented and mannered yet excellent performance as an EveryMan in a nightmare: set in WWII era Brooklyn his milquetoast faces Anti-Semitism and neighborhood paranoia/fascism to the hilt despite his not being Jewish leading to a boiling pot of one's beliefs and the fine line of standing up for one's self in the face of unparalleled madness.
Based on a novel by Arthur Miller, director Neal Slavin allows the acting to come forth and gets it in bulk with exceptional work by Dern, Paymer and surprisingly Aday as the next-door-neighbor from hell.
A very good movie about anti-semitism near the end of WWII.
Look...I've come to expect this level of acting from William Macy...the guy just keeps putting in terrific performances...but MEAT LOAF?
To paraphrase an old adage: "It ain't the meat, it's the emotion"...and the Loaf is quietly buffing up his acting chops of late..Laura Dern carries off the 40's look perfectly here...great job by the costume and hair departments...David Paymer is typecast but right on the money.
Director Neal Slavin's impressive starring cast includes William Macy (seen in The Contender at last year's TIFF), Meat Loaf (AKA Meat Loaf Aday, AKA Michael Lee Aday), David Paymer, and Laura Dern (also starring in Novocaine, also at this year's Festival).Based on the Arthur Miller novel by the same name, Focus follows Christian but "Jewish-looking" Lawrence Newman (Macy) as he struggles among the hatred and anti-Semitism in his neighbourhood.
Pitted between the Jewish store-owner down the street (Paymer) and his card-carrying anti-Semite next door neighbour (Meat Loaf) Newman faces difficulty in dealing with inner conflict and conflict around him.
Good acting by William Macy and Laura Dern in an unconventional story of anti-semitsm..
In fact, throughout the whole film, Macy's character sees how wrong and absolutely unfair anti-Semitism is, but his only complaint, is that he is not really Jewish and as such, it is not fair that he is being persecuted.
Apparently the novel portrays Lawrence Newman as an anti-semite whose fortunes change when he gets "jewish looking" glasses.
Laura Dern, Macy and David Paymer give good performances, so also the good supporting ensemble..
Focus is another great movie starring William H.
As the film unravels, Newman will begin to see a whole different world, where being Jewish is akin to being an animal.The movie is disturbing in the way it shows that being racist was something fairly normal.
In that same vein, this film, `Focus,' directed by Neal Slavin, is important, in it illuminates the problematic reality of anti-Semitism, which for years beyond number has affected millions of people, is still unimaginably prevalent today, and like any manifestation of bigotry, will perpetuate itself if left unchecked or ignored.
Lawrence is the kind of guy who gets by just fine by minding his own business and refusing to involve himself with matters that are not (he feels) his concern.All of that is about to change, however, as with the advent of World War 2, Lawrence, along with the owner of the corner market, Mr. Finkelstein (David Paymer), inexplicably finds himself a target of the neighborhood xenophobes, who have aligned themselves with the `Union Crusaders,' a national organization currently taken to channeling their fears and hatred upon Jews, or anyone who even `looks' like a Jew.
And suddenly Lawrence finds that he can no longer just stand on the sidelines and watch the game being played; because now, he IS the game, whether he wants to be or not.Working from an intelligent, well written screenplay by Kendrew Lascelles, which he adapted from Arthur Miller's novel, Slavin presents a chilling scenario that incisively examines the effects of bigotry upon those against whom it is leveled; and when one considers the fact that this is not merely a hypothetical situation, but a depiction of reality, it becomes all the more disquieting, even unnerving.
Another of the film's strengths is the performance turned in by Laura Dern, as Gertrude Hart, a portrayal that effectively complements Macy's work, as well as that of Slavin.
Dern lends tremendous substance to her character, capturing her physically as well as emotionally, and her colorful zeal crates a striking contrast to Lawrence's reserve that works extremely well, for her character as well as the film itself.And just as Sean Combs recently (in `Monster's Ball') made a good case against dismissing out-of-hand the acting endeavors of an established `rock star,' Meat Loaf Aday gives a powerful performance here, as Fred, Lawrence's next-door neighbor.
I've seen many movies about prejudice, racism, and anti-Semitism, but this seemed to hit me harder than most.This was definitely one of the best indie films I've ever seen...I had to travel 45 minutes to see it, and it was well worth it.
Macy as always was wonderful, so was Laura Dern, and I was pleasantly surprised by Meatloaf's performance, playing the vicious anti-Semite neighbor.
Macy stars as Lawrence Newman in the film based on the novel of the same name by Arthur Miller.
Things change for him we he buys a new pair of round wire-rim glasses and begins to "look like a Jew" to others.
He begins to loosen-up a little after falling in love with a beautiful typical '40s blonde bombshell and marries her (played by Laura Dern.)  This just brings about more talk of him being Jewish, and his neighbors think she's a Jew as well.
This does nothing but create more trouble because, well, ignorance knows no logic.Not only dealing with a good subject, this movie was beautifully filmed using sharp colors and odd camera angles.
Macy's character tries his best to stay in his normal life, but keeps finding himself and his new wife in very anti-semitic surroundings.
The themes of FOCUS are a more intensely personal form of psychotherapy for Miller than for most of America's screenwriters, and the "making of" shows Arthur was still johnny-on-the-spot during location filming, even at the advanced age of 86.
Jew. This is a movie about a man everybody thinks is Jewish.This is a movie about Lawrence Newman, who lives in Brooklyn in the 1940's, at the time of WWII.One day, when he gets himself glasses, people start thinking he's a Jew.And that only, because he looks like one.And he lives in a very antisemitic neighborhood.So some people start treating him like dirt.They make that judgment, being a Jew, of Larry's fresh wife, Gertrude Hart, too.That makes their lives unbearable.Neal Slavin's Focus (2001) is a fairly good look at the antisemitism.That's a problem that won't go away.The movie is based on Athur Miller's novel, which, I admit, I haven't read.But the movie is really good, so I'm sure the book would also.The actors do good job.William H.Macy is always good, and his work as Larry Newman is brilliant.Laura Dern is Gert Hart and she's magnificent.Meat Loaf is almost scary as the neighbor who wants to keep Jews out by any means necessary.David Paymer's character as the Jewish shop-owner Mr. Finkelstein is the most sympathetic in the movie.Paymer is the perfect choice for the role.One of the greatest scenes is in the end when Mr.Finkelstein and Newman fight against those Nazi-like people with baseball bats.They join together to fight the evil.The Christian and the Jew..