Film Review: Focus

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Focus. Rated MA15+ (strong violence, sex scenes and coarse language). 105 minutes. Written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.

Verdict: Australian-born Margot Robbie stars in a glamorous and entertaining tale of high-stakes deception.

If there is one thing for certain we can take away from the experience of this film, it is that Queensland-born actress Margot Robbie’s Hollywood star is now officially in hyperdrive. Robbie, whose performance as Jordan Belfort’s (Leonardo Di Caprio) wife Naomi Lapaglia was the best thing about The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), delivers another sensational performance – only this time, as the film’s undisputed star.

When con artist Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith), who specialises in high volumes of small crimes such as pickpocketing, meets Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie), the pair form an unlikely alliance. She is a relatively inexperienced apprentice con artist, but as the couple become increasingly enamoured with one another, the scale of their cons increases to dazzling, and equally more dangerous, heights.

The key to a successful heist movie is to ensure that we are constantly kept guessing as to who is doing what to who and why. The best examples (of which Jules Dassin’s 1974 masterpiece Rififi is a classic), end up being anxiety-enducing and neurotic affairs, powered by incredible plot twists and turns.

While Focus is far from a perfect example, it certainly offers more than its fair share of entertainment value, helped not only by Robbie’s star-making turn, but also Smith’s charismatic central performance as Nicky. Smith has always been a supremely confident performer on screen, and the sly and slippery Nicky suits him perfectly.

Ficarra and Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love, I Love You Phillip Morris) keep the action simmering at a mostly agreeable pace, while Mexican-born cinematographer Xavier Grobet captures all of the escapades with a fine eye for every super enhanced, slick and glittering detail.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: After Earth

After Earth. Rated M (science fiction themes and violence). 100 minutes. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Screenplay by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan.

Verdict: Deep space Smith and Son has its moments.

The first time we saw Will Smith and his (then eight-year-old) son Jaden in a film together was The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), a story about a man taking custody of his young son as he pursues his ambitions for financial security and independence. Smith Snr was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar (he lost to The Last King of Scotland’s Forest Whitaker), but the real-life father and son bond was beautifully transferred to the big screen and provided the film with a valuable layer of familial authenticity.

In After Earth, that same level of authenticity serves as both an asset and a distraction, as father and (now 15-year-old son) go head-to-head for screen time in a film that is only ever about a father and son relationship – even in spite of its far too literal, seen-it-all-before, sci-fi pretensions.

A cataclysmic environmental disaster has seen the human race abandon Earth for the planet they now call home – Nova Prime. Cypher (Smith Snr) is a celebrated general in a peace-keeping organisation that keeps the inhabitants of the new world safe from the marauding Ursas – creatures that hunt humans by sensing their fear. Kitai (Smith Jnr) is trying desperately hard to be just like his father, even though he feels responsible for the death of his sister Senshi (Zoë Isabella Kravitz), who was killed by an Ursa in their home. When Cypher and Kitai are the only survivors of a spaceship after it has crashed on the now quarantined Earth, Kitai must race against time (and the planet’s hostile predators), to retrieve a distress beacon that will save both his severely wounded Dad and himself from certain death.

Veteran cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) brings real class to the proceedings, especially in the penultimate, particularly impressive sequences atop a volcano, when Kitai takes on his greatest fear. They are also the only scenes in which Smith Jnr appears to be entirely comfortable in front of the camera. Smith Snr takes the sombre route all the way through, and his usual lightness of touch is sacrificed to a deadly earnest performance of one-note seriousness.

Shyamalan (The Last Airbender, The Happening, The Village, Signs, The Sixth Sense) delivers it all to the screen with occasional flourishes of originality, but his and Whitta’s (The Book of Eli) otherwise passable rites of passage screenplay is almost ruined entirely by their ‘Little Golden Book of Movie Endings’.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3. Rated M (science fiction violence). 106 minutes. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Screenplay by Etan Cohen.

Verdict: This very welcome return to form for the Men in Black team works on every level.

Based on Lowell Cunningham’s comic book series, Men in Black (1997) was a phenomenal success – winning an Academy Award for Rick Baker’s make-up. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family), Tommy Lee Jones’s Agent K and Will Smith’s Agent J would go on to become instantly recognisable and immensely popular characters. The sci-fi/comedy/espionage genre mashup worked perfectly, and thankfully (after 2002’s less-than-successful sequel), Mr Sonnenfield almost effortlessly escorts this latest instalment back to the inventive silliness that worked so well for the original.

When Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) escapes from prison, it is with the sole purpose of finding Agent K (Jones) and holding him to account for having shot off his arm before arresting him in 1969. When a space-time continuum reveals that K actually died in the confrontation, both Boris and Agent J (Smith) return to 1969 to rewrite the course of history – with J determined to destroy the evil Boris before he kills the 29-year-old Agent K (Josh Brolin).

Mr Cohen’s (Tropic Thunder) terrific screenplay balances the time-travel imperatives with a great affection for what worked so well in the original – a buddy movie with an alien twist. Mr Brolin is perfect as the younger version of Mr Jones’s K, and both he and Mr Smith make the most of every opportunity to play the script’s every intriguing twist and turn for all its worth. The final sequences (based around the launch of Apollo 11’s trip to the moon) are both expertly handled and surprisingly affecting.

Bill Pope’s (The Matrix, Spider-Man 2 and 3) cinematography stylishly captures Bo Welch’s (Thor, Edward Scissorhands) artful production design – adding to the film’s affectionate take on an era when aliens looked more like the people in colourful alien costumes than the frightful CGI creations they have become. Men in Black III works as well as it does because it fondly and respectfully recalls the early era of alien/space technology movies – which ends up being not only a masterstroke of storytelling, but also an immensely enjoyable and very welcome return to form for the Men in Black team.