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Focus (November 5, 2001)
A short review for a short movie.
Nothing really happens, plain and simple. An Arthur Miller fan, I was frankly dissapointed. Of course, then again, I haven't read the novel this flick was based on, and you know how that normally goes.
This could have been a really great one act play. Frankly, not enough happens at all to merit a full length feature film. We're basically given the pretty bleak, stereotypical, and trite tale of a man who suddenly is thought to be Jewish during a time of maniacal anti-semitism. He fights those who begin terrorism him, and finally ends up going to the police. The end. Wow. Oh, and somewhere in there is mashed a love story of sorts between the always capable William H. Macy and the distractingly ugly Laura Dern who is supposed to be a woman of immeasurably beauty... somewhat attractive, I guess: maybe. But the flick makes you believe she's some sort of goddess, and with that Julia Roberts horseface, ratty hair from hell, man's body, and Renee Zelweger's squinty face, she just don't cut it, ladies and gentlemen.
You never really get to know any of the characters, especially our "heroes," and even when you think you do, people change drastically. I know the screenwriter/director would have you believe that's the point, but it worked in a ridiculous way. For instance, one scene a neighbor will be totally cordial and polite, and in the next: horrible (or vice versa). And it wasn't just that we suddenly learned the true nature of this character, but more that it just seemed so sincere that the screenwriter probably last track who the bad guys were. I couldn't even tell if Macy and Dern truly were racist themselves or just being pressured by their surrounding society.
The bluntness of the flick was so overwhelming that I thought I was watching a Spike Lee joint. For fuck sake, there was a god damn mural right across Macy's house with a happy family saying: "Believe in America: the only way to be" or some crap like that. This was OK in "The Great Gatsby" (the eyes of justice on the wall), but in this day of the Age of Irony, sorry - but, no.
Some of the direction was interesting... nothing particularly new or that fresh. I was a bit annoyed on how much the camera moved. Lots of dollying, lots of zooms that kept cutting me out of the story. Did the director want to make "The Matrix III"? This movie could've been "Glengarry Glen Ross," but instead was a made-for-TV special on TNT.
Next.
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