--- description: The star takes a welcome break from glowering sci-fi roles to play a criminally smooth operator, with creamy Margot Robbie as his partner-in-con title: In 'Focus,' Will Smith Does His Best Cary Grant Impression image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9c3ef72f10e040d2/698781308e06016fbe45a833/focus.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Review: _Focus_: Can Will Smith Do Cary Grant? by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Feb 26, 2015 5:13 PM CUT  Will Smith stars as Nicky Spurgeon in Focus Will Smith stars as Nicky Spurgeon in FocusFrank Masi—Warner Bros. by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Feb 26, 2015 5:13 PM CUT Musical chairs or Russian roulette? Sometimes there’s as much tense drama in the casting of a Hollywood movie as there is in the finished product. This week’s example: _Focus_, a caper film about a veteran con man and the young woman he takes as his accomplice. Ryan Gosling, then Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck were touted as the dapper con, while the female lead was reckoned to be played, at one time or another, by Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Jessica Biel, Rose Byrne, Olivia Munn — basically, every working actress under 35. Since _Focus_ conjures up a more relaxed time in Hollywood history, when the top stars radiated their golden appeal in romantic comedies about duplicitous souls, writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa might have dreamed of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, who paired in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 _To Catch a Thief_. Grant had just hit 50, and Kelly was 25, but their upmarket glamour and wiles made a perfect match for a movie about an aging cat burglar and the young American heiress who dares to play his game. Ficarra and Requa, the authors of this script that everyone and nobody wanted to star in, finally settled on Will Smith, 46, and Margot Robbie, the 24-year-old blond Aussie who shared Leonardo DiCaprio’s bed (and a ton of cocaine) in [_The Wolf of Wall Street_](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/12/27/the-wolf-of-wall-street-scorsese-and-dicaprio-fall-for-the-big-con/ "undefined"). 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. “I can convince anyone of anything,” says Smith’s Nicky Spurgeon, and the man is not boasting. The con in con man is short for confidence — what he radiates, and what he extracts from his marks before fleecing them. The blithe smile, the genial but steely authority he wears like a bespoke suit: that’s Smith since his _Fresh Prince_ days. What’s odd is that in most of his movies — from the time he sauntered into action stardom with _Independence Day_, through a decade of dystopian sci-fi roles in _I, Robot_, _I Am Legend_, _Hancock_ and the misfortune known as _After Earth_ — Smith has been obliged to glower, macho-man style, as if Bruce Willis hadn’t already patented the stoic scowl. Even in the _Men is Black_ movies, the actor’s cool was deadpan; the smile had to be inferred. So Ficarra and Requa deserve some credit in letting Will be Will in the star’s first charm barrage since 2005’s _Hitch_. Spurgeon (whose [Urban Dictionary definition](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spurgeon "undefined") genteelly translates as “the man of all men”) runs a con outfit of 20 or so filchers who work casinos, racetracks, football games — any place where cocky rich guys can be separated from their loot. He’s on hiatus when he meets the creamy blond Jess Barrett (Robbie), who pulls a clumsy ruse that he plays along with simply from professional curiosity. Out of her league but a quick study, Jess learns to pick the pockets of smitten strangers and earns her bona fides. She’s now ready to be Nicky’s partner, and perhaps rival, in con. “Congratulations,” Nicky’s aide-de-camp Horst (Brennan Brown) tells Jess, “you’re a criminal.” ### See the Most Memorable On-Screen Couples  Peter and Ellie - It Happened One Night, 1934 Columbia Pictures/Getty Images  Scarlett and Rhett - Gone With The Wind, 1939 Silver Screen Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images  Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson - His Girl Friday, 1940 Columbia Pictures/Getty Images  Rich Blaine and Isla Lund - Casablanca, 1942 Popperfoto/Getty Images  Ricky and Lucy - I Love Lucy, 1951 Archive Photos/Getty Images  Don Lockwood and Kathy Seldon- Singin' in the Rain, 1952 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images  Tony and Maria - West Side Story, 1961 United Artists/Getty Images  Holly Golightly and Paul - Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961 Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images  Bonnie and Clyde - Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 Fotos International/Getty Images  Katie and Hubbell - The Way We Were, 1973 Columbia/Getty Images  Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsen - Grease, 1978 Paramount Pictures/Fotos International/Getty Images  Han Solo and Leia Organa - The Empire Strikes Back, 1980 Lucasfilm  Sam and Diane - Cheers, 1982 NBC/Getty Images  Frances 'Baby' Houseman and Johnny Castle - Dirty Dancing, 1987 Vestron/Getty Images  Wesley and Princess Buttercup - The Princess Bride, 1987 20th Century Fox  Harry Burns and Sally Albright - When Harry Met Sally, 1989 Hulton Archive/Getty Images  Vivian and Edward - Pretty Woman, 1990 Buena Vista/Getty Images  Beauty and the Beast - Beauty and the Beast, 1991 Disney  Cory and Topanga - Boy Meets World, 1993 SGranitz—WireImage/Getty Images  Jenny Curran and Forrest Gump - Forrest Gump, 1994 Paramount Pictures  Ross and Rachel - Friends, 1994 NBC/Getty Images  Doug and Carol - E.R., 1994 NBC/Getty Images  Jack and Rose - Titanic, 1997 20th Century Fox/Getty Images  Buffy and Angel - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1997 Getty Images  Carrie and Big - Sex and the City, 1998 HBO/Getty Images  Patrick Verona and Kat Stratford - 10 Things I Hate About You, 1999 Buena Vista/Getty Images  Noah and Allie - The Notebook, 2004 New Line Cinema  Jack and Ennis - Brokeback Mountain, 2005 Focus Films  Tom and Summer - (500) Days of Summer, 2009 Fox Searchlight  Carl and Ellie - Up, 2009 Pixar/Disney The dapper-con genre, which includes _The Lady Eve_ and _The Sting_, with a brief recent revival in _Now You See It_, demands of its audience only a readiness to fall for the flimflam, as Nicky’s marks do. The big gamble in _Focus_: it’s a Will Smith movie that dares to be small. It leads its stars into swanky peril with a zillionaire gambler (B.D. Wong) and an Argentine race-car mogul (Rodrigo Santoro), in games the viewer is wise to trust no one. Ficarra and Requa, who pulled off a more brazen act of sex and treachery in _I Love You Philip Morris_, here just want to have and provide a good time. Which they do. They’ll even take an R rating for the fun of some raunchy wit spouted by one of Nicky’s pals (Adrian Martinez). And Robbie validated the filmmakers’ trust at the end of a long casting process. Suggesting a modern Grace Kelly who wears her libido on the outside, and is a bit more self-conscious in her scheming, Robbie is really closer to a high-end knockoff of the young Michelle Pfeiffer. But that’s O.K. too: it adds to the film’s playful sense that everything, including star quality, is a con. Except for Smith, of course. He may not be the 21st-century Cary Grant — who could be? — but as a Hollywood charmer, he’s still the real deal. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3723716/focus-movie-review-will-smith-margot-robbie/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3723716/focus-movie-review-will-smith-margot-robbie/"},"headline":"Review: Focus: Can Will Smith Do Cary Grant?","datePublished":"2015-02-26T17:13:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:05:22.660Z","description":"The star takes a welcome break from glowering sci-fi roles to play a criminally smooth operator, with creamy Margot Robbie as his partner-in-con","url":"https://time.com/3723716/focus-movie-review-will-smith-margot-robbie/","keywords":["movies","will smith","margot robbie","focus"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9c3ef72f10e040d2/698781308e06016fbe45a833/focus.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9c3ef72f10e040d2/698781308e06016fbe45a833/focus.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"focus","caption":"focus","creditText":"Frank Masi—Warner Bros.","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3723716/focus-movie-review-will-smith-margot-robbie/","name":"Review: Focus: Can Will Smith Do Cary Grant?"}}]}] ```