Focus (2001) Critic Reviews

Doesn't reach for reality; it's a deliberate attempt to look and feel like a 1940s social problems picture, right down to the texture of the color photography.Read the full review

About American anti-Semitism, but it's not a typical genteel "cause" movie.Read the full review

Two constants: good acting and an old-fashioned preachiness that backfires.Read the full review

The movie's surreal style, with its film-noir camerawork and ominous lighting, turns the story into a fable about fear and nonconformism, and Mr. Macy's and Ms. Dern's carefully shaded caricatures match the mood.Read the full review

Seems embalmed in its own time, an earnest and handsomely crafted museum piece, not an urgent transposition of Miller's moral outrage to the new century.Read the full review

The topic certainly suits the times, but the director's approach is as alienating as it is old-fashioned.Read the full review

No denying the relevance of the tale.Read the full review

Works better as a subject for high school study rather than lasting art.Read the full review

While Macy is persuasive, much of Focus is not.Read the full review