Focus is a bit too slick, but engaging nonetheless.

| Mar 7, 2017

It reminds us why he became a star in the first place, and provides a glimpse of where he might go from here.

| May 28, 2016

If it's so easy to guess what women want, why is this movie so utterly devoid of any of it?

| Dec 31, 2015

In Focus, [Smith is] quieter, graver, more emotionally remote, more... substantial.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 6, 2015

Focus has some hard swallows, including a last-reel speech so inessential it's comical, but it's also got a unique syncopation about it that's admirable, if not entirely effective.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 5, 2015

[Writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa] set exactly the right tone as well as tweaking the plot with enough twists to keep your brain engaged. And it looks good too.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 5, 2015

Focus is about the sensation of having your wallet lifted by a pickpocket with nimble fingers. And it's skilled enough to earn the viewer's emptier billfold.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 2, 2015

That sound you hear is the high-fives in the writers' room, and that, unfortunately, is where the filmmakers' focus remains.

| Mar 2, 2015

Can they trust each other? Of course not. Do we care? Not really.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 1, 2015

[For Smith,] Focus isn't a full return to brilliance but a welcome stop, hopefully, on the way there.

| Feb 27, 2015

It's a shiny, diverting ride. (And right about now, that's OK.)

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 27, 2015

Perhaps the film's greatest trick is the one that happens offscreen: Hours after the end credits roll, it will completely disappear from your mind.

| Feb 27, 2015

This is the kind of movie where we're not supposed to know at any time who is playing whom, but since the characterizations are glossy and paper-thin, it's difficult to get worked up about who gets fleeced.

| Original Score: C+ | Feb 27, 2015

Sure, the closer you get the more it has a cubic-zirconia feel, costume jewelry instead of the real thing, but, hey, it's a plenty breezy diversion here in the latter days of this seemingly unending winter.

| Feb 27, 2015

The mix of longtime star and minx on the rise is one tasty element in the success of a movie that approaches the modest goals and effortless allure of a 60-year-old Hitchcock.

| Feb 27, 2015

Drunk on its perfume-ad cinematography and doesn't know when to quit with its double-double cross plotting.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 27, 2015

Smith's natural charisma has been dulled by special effects bonanzas and/or a desire to play against type. In "Focus," he feels like himself again, and he reminds you why he became one of Hollywood's biggest stars in the first place.

| Original Score: B | Feb 27, 2015

It's not that the movie keeps you guessing with its intricacy, it's more like it's making it up as it goes along.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 27, 2015

Mostly, it is fun to watch Will Smith and Margot Robbie, and to marvel at whatever divine or evolutionary miracle concentrated so much charisma in the two of them.

| Feb 27, 2015

Even if you're willing to forgive its sinkhole plotholes and farthest-fetched conceits, the film - from cowriters/co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa - ultimately makes no sense.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 27, 2015