Focus Review: 8 Reasons Will Smith's New Movie Is A Con

2. Repetitive And Overly-Explained Twists

There's going to be a more spoiler-y bent to this entry - those of you yet to see the movie and averse to third act twists should skip to the final point. Focus is a film about con-men, so naturally there'll be some twisty-turny events. And because it's a film about con-men made post-Ocean's Eleven, it has to have a massive u-turn that throws everything that came before into a different light, yet doesn't confuse a mainstream audience. It gets around the latter condition by unravelling the numerous twists using generic flash-backs coupled with narration, before having a character explicitly sum it up. It no doubt means nobody will come out the film confused, but also ensures that any cine-literate audience member is well ahead of the film for most of the run time. But it's not just the presentation of the twists that's the issue here, but also their frequency. There's a major rug-pull of some degree every fifteen minutes or so, and they all operate on the same "One character was pretending to be the opposite of what they were" bent. A couple of times it comes across as surprising, but less because it's a well written reveal and more because you can't believe the film is playing the same card again.