Focus

Focus is based on a little-known novel by playwright Arthur Miller, written when he was a very young man, just after WWII. Produced by media mogul Michael Bloomberg, and directed by Neal Slavin, the film takes place in New York, during the war. William H. Macy of Fargo plays Lawrence Newman, a middle-aged executive who lives with his mother. One night, he sees a neighbor cavorting with a Hispanic woman in the street. The incident turns ugly, and Lawrence later hears that the woman was raped and brutally assaulted. He tells no one. Faced with anti-Semitism at work and in his neighborhood, Lawrence resists joining the bigots, but he doesn't have the courage to stand up to them. He doesn't act when Fred (Meat Loaf Aday) and his other neighbors persecute the Jewish newsvendor, Finkelstein (David Paymer), who lives on the corner. But his lack of active participation in their efforts to drive Finkelstein out makes his neighbors suspicious. One day, Gertrude Hart (Laura Dern) walks into his office looking for a job. Lawrence is immediately struck by her flashy style and good looks, but he's been warned against hiring Jews. He suspects that she's Jewish, and she gets offended at his insinuations and storms out. Things get much worse for Lawrence when he gets a new pair of glasses. Everyone says they make him look Jewish. His boss decides he doesn't make the right impression, and tries to demote him. Lawrence is outraged and quits. He has trouble finding another job, until he runs into Gertrude again. The Jewish-owned firm she works for hires him. He apologizes to her and asks her out. They fall in love, and quickly marry. His neighbors, believing Gertrude is a Jew, grow more suspicious, and Lawrence soon finds himself in physical danger.

AMG Review: Focus strives for moral complexity on the order of Schindler's List, but it's a claustrophobic, heavy-handed social drama that fails to provide a sufficient historical context for the disturbing fictional events that it depicts. William H. Macy, who plays the conflicted Lawrence Newman, is a good actor, and he manages to suggest Lawrence's basic humanity, which is overwhelmed by jittery cowardice. But it's often difficult to tell exactly where sweaty nervousness ends and affronted decency begins. Newman's fear is justified by his hostile surroundings, but it strains credulity to think that New York City toward the end of WWII was such a hotbed of openly expressed anti-Semitism. The only non-Jewish characters in the film that exhibit any complexity -- that couldn't be described as "evil bigots" -- are Lawrence and Gertrude (Laura Dern), who gain an understanding of the plight of the victims of prejudice only when they themselves are mistaken for Jews. Even if Focus is historically accurate, it fails as drama. The film, based on a novel by Arthur Miller, is unpleasant to watch, not only because its subject matter is intrinsically disturbing, but also because, as directed by Neal Slavin, the treatment is so didactic and heavy-handed. There's also no sense that the nation is at war, other than occasional mention that some men will be returning home soon, presumably to join in the persecution. It's also troubling that the story places much more importance on whether or not Lawrence will join his neighbors in harassing the local Jewish family than on whether or not he will tell anyone that he witnessed a neighbor's brutal rape and assault of a Puerto Rican woman. In engaging in such sloppy moral accounting, Focus loses its power as a polemic, and it's too strident and unpleasant a film to serve as mere entertainment.