Focus (Blu-ray Review)

Focus is one of those films I initially saw trailers for on television earlier this year and thought to myself nah I’ll skip it.  It just didn’t do anything for me.  Then came all the reviews like Aaron Neuwirth’s positive coverage here (God I miss all his incredible movie reviews).  And so because of all the positive praise this film has garnered, sign me up!  I wanted to see it!  Thankfully Warner Bros. will be releasing this title in retailers everywhere on June 2nd and I just so happen to have exclusive access to one of those Blu-ray Combo Packs now.  So I thought oh what the hell.  Let’s do this!  Let’s review Focus for the people.  And here we are.  Ready to see things sharper?  Well, we’re talking about the Blu-ray format so chances are good that you’re ready.  Here we go!

Film 

They say that love will get you killed when Focus arrives onto Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital HD on June 2nd from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. I’ll be the judge of that, but first let’s cover all the basics before we start talking story.  Focus stars Will Smith (aka The Fresh Prince),  Margot Robbie (aka Harley Quinn), Rodrigo Santoro and Gerald McRaney.  It’s written and directed by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa, the tag team that formerly brought you Crazy, Stupid, Love.  So now that we got that out of the way, what do you say I tell you what it’s all about?  Follow me…

Make no mistake about it, Focus is a con artist movie.  It’s a series of one misdirection after another, and I mean that literally.  I wouldn’t lie to you although given the subject matter I could see how you could be ultimately suspicious of my statements.  So when you’re talking about a con artist, you’re talking about someone who is a master of misdirection and never stops playing until they win it all, or in some tragic cases lose it all too.

Will Smith stars as Nicky, a seasoned con artist who becomes romantically involved with an up and coming one, Jess (Margot Robbie).  Anyone that knows anything about the art of being a conman knows that is a no no.  As he’s teaching her the tricks of the trade, the two seem to get very close and to err on the side of caution I am going to twist things around here as to not divulge any spoilers.  The film ends up flashing three years later in Buenos Aires within the middle of the high stakes racecar circuit.  Nicky has a new plan, but who’s the teacher and who’s the pupil now?  Is Jess smarter than Nicky at this point?  Who are all of these other people wanting to cause harm to Nicky?  And what’s he going to do with all that money?  Rest assured, these questions and many more eventually do get answered by the feature’s end.

The thing is, I was excited to see what Margot Robbie had in store for us next after her breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street.  However, she really didn’t impress me much here.  She kind of reminded me of a Denise Richards, but hopefully her life doesn’t take a turn like that.  Stay away from Charlie Sheen!  Nonetheless, I am looking forward to seeing her again one fine day as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad.  That should be something.  Hell!  I just thought about this.  She’s also re-teaming with Will Smith in that feature too.  Sorry Brandon, Focus is not a prequel to Suicide Squad.  Trust me.  I’m not conning you.

Will Smith on the other hand is spectacular throughout here.  I loved seeing him return and bask in the limelight in a somewhat darker and edgier role than usual.  He portrayed a con artist perfectly from his facial expressions and conversational techniques to his deceptive movements and of course his non verbal queues.  If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear you were watching a real con artist in action.  And therein lies the problem I had with this film.

The moments where Will and Robbie’s characters were conning people were sheer brilliance.  Everything else in between, well it really wasn’t that interesting, nor was the film’s conclusion.  There were a lot of lulls throughout and I frequently caught myself looking at the time.  That’s never a good sign.  However, like I said, the con artist games were exceptional here.  A couple of times I guessed what was coming, but more times than I care to admit I fell for the con and got so wrapped up in the frantic situation that I completely forgot oh yeah, this could all be a con.  Your results obviously may vary, but I think my film score errs on the side of caution, which most critics seemed to have also sided on with this one.

Video 

• Encoding: AVC MPEG-4
• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Clarity/Detail: Fine detail was all abound here from the snowflakes falling outside the window to the stubble and out of place hairs on the actors and the wood grain and fur in the textures of clothing and set design.
• Depth: The opening aerial shots over New Orleans in nighttime, within the very first frames of the film, were breathtakingly gorgeous and full of endless depth.  Even all the restaurants frequented within the film felt spacious and expansive.
• Black Levels: The black levels were over-the-top deep, inky and dreamy throughout.  You couldn’t ask for more here.
• Color Reproduction: The majority of the sets here were dimly lit.  However, colors were vibrant and did pop when allowed with a lot of neon green and blue hues.  Outside daytime shots looked outstanding.
• Flesh Tones: The skin tones were a bit jazzed and warm, but nothing that is overly distracting or harsh looking.  It just increased the intensity of the con scenes, haha.
• Noise/Artifacts: There were no visible signs of artifacts, noise or ugliness in the presentation. In other words, there’s nothing that will distract you or take away from your enjoyment in the print here.

Audio 

• Audio Format(s): EnglishDTS-HD MA 7.1, English Descriptive Audio 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
• Dynamics: This one’s a hard one to grade because at times the surround track felt dull and lifeless, but other times it was rocking and knocking your socks off.  Overall, yes!  The dynamics were spot on here and its presentation really put you in the middle of the intense situations.
• Low Frequency Extension: The LFE channel was asleep for half of this feature.  What I mean by that is I often found my subwoofer taking a nap frequently in the beginning.  However, once we got to the Super Bowl scenes the booming soundtrack brought the LFE channel back to life and from there on out things sounded grand in this department, especially with the ferocity of those Grand Prix cars.  Vroom!
• Surround Sound Presentation: This is probably where the audio presentation of Focus shines the most as the rear channels were always filled with ambient noise, restaurant chatter, club music booming and most importantly, those Grand Prix cars all speeding by.
• Dialogue Reproduction: The dialog throughout was all clear and intelligible.

Extras 

Focus will be available on Blu-ray Combo Pack and includes the film in High Definition 1080p on Blu-ray disc, a DVD (Standard Definition) and a digital version of the movie in Digital HD with UltraViolet.   The Blu-ray Combo Pack is where the bulk of the extra supplements are.  The Standard Definition DVD only contains Deleted Scenes as a special feature.  So without further ado, let’s “focus” in tighter on every goodie you’ll find in this section.

• Masters of Misdirection: The Players in a Con (HD, 10:25) – This one talks about the “con”sultant they brought in to assist with the con games as well as tutorials, explanations of the art and the cast and crew discussing the various onscreen events and pickpocketing movements.
• Will Smith: Gentleman Thief (HD, 5:52) – This character profile has a sort of retro vibe to its presentation and of course, this one focuses solely on Smith’s character.  This one examines the role Smith played and ultimately his performance, the wit, calmness and humor.
• Margot Robbie: Stealing Hearts (HD, 4:08) – The retor grindhouse vibe continues here in Margot’s own profile short where she spends a lot of time talking about the pickpocketing moments and the incredible experience of it all.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 8:02) –  These were deleted for a reason so watch accordingly, i.e. boring.
• Alternate Opening (HD, 2:44) – Without divulging any spoilers, this one opens in a jewelry store with nice pink display cases and a successful heist.  This honestly doesn’t really change things for me.

Summary 

So there you have it.  This is my honest to God truthful Blu-ray review of Focus.  I’m not going to play any con games with you or pull a fast one to trick you into purchasing it.  I called it out above like I saw it.  I would have loved for this film to knock my socks off, proverbially speaking, but ultimately it did not.  Outside of the stellar con games, it just lagged too much for me and in the end I found the resolution pretty uninteresting for a number of reasons I won’t get into here to avoid any spoilers in case there are readers trying to decide whether they want to invest in this one or not.  All in all it’s an average film with an exceptional audio/video presentation on the High Definition format of choice, Blu-ray, complete with some quick, but solid extras.  Here’s my two cents.  If you can, rent it first before plopping your hard earned money down because if you don’t like it, then the con is on you!

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FOCUS

Arrives on

Blu-ray Combo Pack

June 2nd!

PRE-ORDER NOW!

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