Focus (4K Ultra HD Review)
- Review Date: Oct 21, 2024
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Glenn Ficarra, John RequaRelease Date(s)
2015 (August 27, 2024)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. Pictures (Warner Home Video)- Film/Program Grade: C+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: C-
Review
It didn’t take long for Margot Robbie’s star power to rise after the release of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, made evident by the slew of star-studded Hollywood productions she was immediately added to. One of those productions was Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s Focus, another starring vehicle for Will Smith that required an actress who could match his on-screen power. Robbie turned out to be a perfect fit and helped make this bit of escapist entertainment much more palatable than if it was just a Will Smith mugging festival. Ficarra and Requa already had a couple of comedy hits under their belts with I Love You Phillip Morris and Crazy, Stupid, Love, thus it was not very surprising to see them attached to a $50 million-dollar production that tried to move confidently across comedy and into action-thriller territory. The results are definitely mixed, though when the film focuses on the white-hot duo at the forefront it succeeds in being a slick, funny confidence game.
Focus focuses (heh) seasoned con-man Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith, I Am Legend) as he meets inexperienced grifter Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie, Barbie). Jess tries to con Nicky with the help of a fake jealous husband, although Nicky immediately notices the con and turns the tables on Jess. But what does a con man love more than themselves? The possibility of bringing someone under their wing! With the pair of con artists trading secrets and learning from each other, they have to be planning some big cons, right? You’d be right, as Focus is structured as three different long cons, with the romantic relationship between Nicky and Jess causing extra difficulty as the cons become more and more extravagant and dangerous.
Here’s the thing about Focus, it lacks it. The project can often feel like a thinly-veiled excuse for slick Hollywood escapism, especially as the stakes keep ramping up concurrently with the instability of Jess and Nicky’s will they/won’t they relationship. The cons themselves are convoluted to the point of making the stakes seem higher than they actually are, thus kudos goes to Ficarra and Requa for understanding that the slipstream of information and stakes-raising is how to keep the audience guessing and invested. It’s just that the film falls apart when you take a bird’s eye view at the proceedings. The relationship between the stars crumbles under the fact that these cons brought them together. The illusory nature of who they actually are outside of the cons isn’t very well explored. But the rush of escapism that comes with a thrill-a-minute con? That remains alive and well.
At the end of the day, both Ficarra and Requa are capable showmen, finding much delight in uprooting the audience in the middle of these cons with claustrophobic close-ups, audio drop-outs and other diversions to keep you guessing. And then when the truth of the con is laid out in great detail at the end of each one, even more actions are revealed that you may have missed. That’s cool if you’re watching this purely for escapist entertainment, but we never learn anything about the characters that doesn’t keep them at arm’s length emotionally. If running a con is a game of metering emotions to successfully usurp a mark, then how does that affect the characters personally? We don’t know, because the ride is the fun.
Ready to pull a fast one? Focus comes home on 4K Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, presented as a dual-layered BD66 single-disc release that houses both the 2160p presentation of the film and the supplements. The disc is housed in a standard black Amaray case, and the disc itself boots up to a standard menu screen with options to play the film, turn on/off subtitles, and explore bonus features.
Focus was released in 2015, when some productions were finishing as 4K Digital Intermediates and others at 2K to reduce costs and time in the editing process. This particular film was captured digitally by cinematographer Xavier Pérez Grobet on a couple of Arri cameras, including the Alexa Plus 4:3 and Alexa XT with V-Lite and V-Plus lenses, then finished as a 2K Digital Intermediate with some of the special effects being mastered in 2.8K, and then downsampled to 2K. Focus was also in the news upon its release for using Final Cut Pro X as the main editing software for the film. At the time, many more robust editing software suites were used by big studio filmmakers, but the flexibility of Final Cut Pro X provided Requa and Ficarra with the ability to edit on the fly from the set. Even though the main editing machine was an 8-core Mac Pro housed in Los Angeles, Final Cut Pro X enabled them to organize and edit dailies directly after shooting, making the editing process rather quick. Ficarra and Requa have also gone on record saying that they chose to shoot in 2K because the massive 4K files coming from the Arri camera suite were a bit too robust for the editing suite to handle in the way that they needed.
Alright, time to get down to brass tacks. The 2160p presentation of Focus is framed in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and offers an HEVC encode that, like most of Warner Bros.’ 4K discs, handles everything wonderfully throughout the presentation. Although this is a 2K upscale, the Arri Alexa suite is no slouch in capturing finite details, contrast and sharpness. That’s why the Dolby Vision HDR treatment here does wonders to really make everything look rich and lush given the use of the wider color gamut. This is a film that revels in the glitz and glam of all the exotic locales the characters visit, with a lot of establishing location shots looking sharp as they ever have. And when the more intimate scenes occur, shadow detail and black levels are keyed in just right. Once again, this is a very handsome presentation of a 2K upscale that benefits from the color range returned by the Arri Alexa suite. The HDR treatment just puts in the requisite work to expose all this gorgeous footage to 2160p. The bitrate hovers between 70-80Mbps, which is not surprising given it’s a 2K upscale and only housed on a 66GB disc.
The attached 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track is similarly robust, although I wonder if the cost to upgrade it to Dolby Atmos matrixing proved too hefty for this MOD (Made-on-Demand) 4K release. That said, the track sounds terrific in both high and low ends, making easy work of the score and dialogue mix. Bass levels are very appreciable, as are the surround effects that envelop the rear channels. If you have a good home theater setup, this track will give it a nice workout. Please note that since this is a Warner Bros. MOD title, all subtitles save for English have been removed. Not sure why this is the case since 4K is inherently Region-Free, but I digress.
As for special features, Warner Bros. carries over the suite of supplements found on the original 2015 Blu-ray, all in HD:
- Masters of Misdirection: The Players in a Con (10:25)
- Will Smith: Gentleman Thief (5:52)
- Margot Robbie: Stealing Hearts (4:08)
- Deleted Scenes (10:46)
- Alternate Opening (2:44)
These are EPK-style interviews that are light, fluffy and don’t have much depth. There’s one feature with Apollo Robbins, the consultant hired to orchestrate the sleight-of-hand maneuvers that Will Smith’s character is so good at, that has some fun in breaking down the truth behind the tricks. Otherwise, the interviews with Will Smith and Margot Robbie are short in length and on details, and don’t do much to educate us on what we already know about the superstars. The deleted scenes don’t amount to much and you can understand why they were cut, plus the alternate opening revolving around a jewel heist shows what could have been.
Come for the long cons, stay for the blazing chemistry of Margot Robbie and Will Smith with John Requa and Glen Ficcara’s Focus. The 2160p presentation is a very nice bump over the standard Blu-ray. And although the supplements are still lacking, I’m sure fans will find much to enjoy between the stunning video presentation and enveloping audio. Pick this one up if you’re in the mood for a slick bit of Hollywood escapism that’ll fly out of your brain as soon as the credits roll.
- Sam Cohen
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