It serves as a forceful reminder of how small a difference there can be between unity and bigotry.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2002

Performances, the story's historical origins, and the inherent goodness and contemporaneity of its storyline make Focus a movie worth viewing.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 9, 2001

Focus is well-meaning, but it's all looks with no substance.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2001

A powerful though overwrought study of bigotry and fear.

| Nov 16, 2001

The topic certainly suits the times, but the director's approach is as alienating as it is old-fashioned.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 9, 2001

A rather square civics lesson of a movie.

| Nov 9, 2001

The story is exceedingly simplistic, but it is made interesting by first-time feature director Neal Slavin's visual and dramatic conception.

| Nov 9, 2001

Though Macy and Dern offer resolute, solid performances, the viewer is left feeling that their characters are little more than carriers of ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 9, 2001

A deliberate attempt to look and feel like a 1940s social problems picture, right down to the texture of the color photography.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 9, 2001

Seems embalmed in its own time, an earnest and handsomely crafted museum piece.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2001

Every irony is signaled a little too obviously.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 8, 2001

Moral courage and intelligence are always welcome, even when the package isn't wrapped tightly enough.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2001

All too often seems like preaching to the choir instead of the gut-wrenching drama it wants to be, could have been -- and sometimes is.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2001

Macy, who has become, in himself, a reason to see any picture he's in, is superb as a man caught in a dilemma.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 2, 2001

Too much message and too little psychological validity.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 2, 2001

An unnerving film about the twin perils of intolerance and silence.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 1, 2001

Slavin ... overdoes the portent, but in this time of Muslims being wounded by the same arrows aimed at Taliban terrorists, there is no denying the relevance of the tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 23, 2001

Absurdly overheated: a Twilight Zone-y episode that bludgeons you with irony and doomsday ambience.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2001

In spite of the screenplay's one-note didacticism, the movie's nightmarish atmosphere is intense enough to box you into a scary corner.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 19, 2001

The acting is first-rate -- especially by Paymer, who's affecting in a part with very little dialogue.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 19, 2001