Focus - Will Smith/ Margot Robbie.

This is a good example of how quickly you can become disinterested in a film. It's also a warning as to how challenging it is to mix genres - something that is a requirement for all studios seeking a movie that has global appeal. 

Focus starts out as a caper movie. A team of people with different skills pull off elaborate crimes. The major pro of this genre is that it feels innately cool to be in the realm of the master thief.  When combined with the buddy movie element, it's no wonder that they tend to so do well at the box office. 

In crime capers such as these, the crime has to be about money, normally from someone who can afford to lose it. So it's a little edgy that they're just stealing off regular punters who are just there to see the superbowl (the script tries to counteract they would have spent the money drinking and whoring anyway). However it still feels cool when they're knicking off people in the street. 

The challenge with crime caper comedy is making us give a damn about the hero by making the crime personal.  So Danny Ocean wants to rob Benedict because he's going out with his ex wife Tess. 

Here we see something of his ghost early one, but we're not really seeing any weakness, he's too slick for that. 

His weakness is exposed when he chooses the game over love by giving up Margot at 42 mins, but then I really don't care. Without this, I probably would have stopped watching before 15 mins. 

After 42 mins, it's basically an entirely new film, set three years later at a race track, and a plot for Will to sell a fake alghorithm to all the other teams. Note that he doesn't actually need to do this, because the guy already owns the alghorithm, but "that's not enough". 

Because it's a brand new film, you really don't feel like you need to the first 42 mins. It might actually have been better if they had as we could have learned that story as we went. 

The film turns on the fact that he was secretly cut up about her departure on 42 minutes. But if that's so, why do it? He was the leader of the group, so there really was no reason to. This disparity in character really represents the loophole from one genre - the crime caper - to another - the Romantic Comedy. 

By 1'17 the whole thing feels long and unsatisfying. There's no coherent desire line, as it switches genres half way through. Interesting to note that if they had led with the romantic comedy angle, where the desire line is to get the girl/boy, then it would have a coherent desire line. 

When Will is shot at the end, it completely smashes the mood of the romantic comedy that we were in, as well as his equally improbably resurrection by the guy who shot him and then resurrected him with gaffer tape, his "father". 

There's at least two instances where there are two unfair revelations, where the audience had no fighting chance of working out the answer - the superbowl bet, and the dad revelation scene. Revelations such as these are essentially cheap thrills. 

The film should at least get credit for showing a mixed raced couple on screen. When you think about it, this is an embarrassingly freak occurence, unless the pressures of a mixed race relationship are teh fulcrum of the film. They take it too far by showing Will Smith's dad, who's white! Really not sure that's possible!

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