Focus(2015)

Plot Summary

• Seasoned con-man Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith) goes to a nightclub, where a very inexperienced grifter, Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie), attempts to seduce him. Jess was being harassed by another patron in full view of Nicky, and to get rid of the person Jess points to Nicky as her boyfriend and joins him at his table and starts flirting with him. Later Jess takes Nicky up to her room. Jess pretends that they've been caught by her jealous husband, in order to con Nicky. Seeing through their deception, Nicky exposes their plan and advises them never to lose focus when faced with unexpected situations before leaving. Nicky tells them never to drop the con and to "die with the lie".Nicky then follows Jess and together they go for a dinner. Jess convinces Nicky to become her mentor. Nicky says that his father, Bucky Spurgeon (Gerald McRaney), was forced to shoot Nicky's grandfather after a con gone wrong, a ploy known as the "Toledo Panic Button." Nicky and Jess have a minor training session in the snow outside, where Nicky teaches Jess how to divert the victim's attention to one side, so they can steal from the other. Nicky says diverting the focus is the key.Jess follows Nicky to New Orleans, successfully persuading him to take her under his wing, where she is introduced to Nicky's crew. She picks a few pockets as a test while wearing a prostitute outfit. The idea is that nobody will look at her face while she is in that dress. Crew includes Horst (Brennan Brown), Gareth (Griff Furst) and Tommy.The idea is to stick to robbing rich folks, and nobody with a cane or in a wheelchair as it brings bad luck. Together they hit the Mardi Gras parade. Jess is a natural and Nicky makes her a member of the crew. Nicky shows Jess all kinds of tricks including card swiping, and pin lifting from ATM machines. Nicky has a whole backroom of operations to sort through the stolen merchandise and to convert it into cash. Soon Nicky and Jess develop a romantic relationship, upsetting Nicky, who was taught by his father to never become emotionally involved with anyone in their line of business. Nicky and his crew clean out $1.2 million. As the crew disbands, Horst asks Nicky now to gamble, in earshot of Jess.At the 17th Associated Football Franchise of America Championship Game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome between the Chicago Rhinos and the Miami Threshers, Nicky and Jess con a compulsive gambler, Liyuan Tse (B.D. Wong). The con starts with a small bet between Nicky and Jess which Tse overhears and wants to participate. From there, Tse and Nicky make a series of bigger bets, each of which Tse wins and Nicky loses a lot of money. With each loss Nicky shows a gradually increasing amount of desperation to win a bet. Nicky bets all of the gang's money $1.1 million (as he lost $100,000 already in earlier bets), on a high card draw and loses again.To win it back, Nicky asks Tse to pick any player on or off the field and has Jess guess the jersey number of the player picked. It is 100 to 1 odds and Nicky bets $2 million. Distraught, Jess scans the field, sees Farhad (Adrian Martinez) wearing jersey number 55, and realizes it is another con. They take Tse for millions. Nicky later explains how Tse had been programmed to pick 55 from his arrival, with subtle, subliminal prompts throughout his day. This victory leaves Tse impressed, who even graciously gives all the money back to Nicky.Nicky later explains that Jess was the "little blind mouse" who was not supposed to know until later that Nicky was running a game on Tse the whole time. Afterwards, Nicky gives Jess her share but reluctantly sends her away, leaving her heartbroken.Three years later, Nicky is in Buenos Aires, working for billionaire motor-sport team owner Rafael Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro). Garriga needs to beat a team headed by Australian businessman McEwen (Robert Taylor) to win the championship. Nicky will pretend to be Garriga's team's disgruntled technician who is willing to sell his custom fuel using algorithm EXR. Instead, he will sell McEwen a bogus version which will actually slow their car down. At a Pre-race party, Nicky runs into Jess, who is now Garriga's girlfriend. Nicky has a convincing fight with Garriga in public and is recruited by McEwen to provide the component.Nicky begins pursuing Jess again, and they eventually rekindle their relationship. The head of Garriga's security entourage, Owens (Gerald McRaney), is suspicious and follows Nicky and Jess and narrowly misses catching them together. Nicky delivers the component to McEwen for three million euros but also sells it to the other teams for similar amounts. While he is waiting for Jess at his hotel room, he receives a text saying "You're burned leave now" meaning he is exposed and should leave immediately.Nicky and Jess attempt to return to the United States together. However, they are caught by Garriga's men and taken to Garriga's garage, where Nicky pleads for Jess's life and is beaten by Garriga. Garriga is convinced that she helped Nicky gain access to EXR, so he begins to suffocate her. To save Jess, Nicky explains that he tricked her into believing he still had feelings for her, and the necklace he had given her secretly recorded Garriga's password and login information. Jess was conned and knew nothing about it.In other words, Jess was the "little blind mouse" in Nicky's con once again. However, Jess then reveals that she was only trying to seduce Garriga in order to steal his valuable watch but had not actually got close enough to Garriga for Nicky's story to be true.Nicky then promises to come clean to spare Jess's life, but Owens shoots him in the chest, causing a horrified Garriga to leave. Owens then reveals himself to be Bucky, and assures Jess that he avoided any major arteries by employing the "Toledo Panic Button". He then tapes up Nicky's wounds and draws excess blood from his lung with a syringe so he can breathe. They flee the garage in Garriga's vehicle.Bucky drives Nicky and Jess to the hospital to treat Nicky's punctured lung. Before he drops them off, he reveals why he has left him on the streets: during a poker deal in Boston, he had a gun pulled on him, and all he could think about then was Nicky. He then walked away and never looked back.After emphasizing that love will get one killed in the game, Bucky departs with all the money as a reminder of the consequences of losing focus. After he leaves, Nicky notices that Jess snatched Garriga's $200,000 watch, and a smiling Nicky and Jess walk towards the hospital entrance together.

Storyline

• Nicky Spurgeon is an extremely accomplished con man who takes an amateur con artist, Jess, under his wing. Nicky and Jess become romantically involved, and with Nicky's profession of being a liar and a cheater for a living, he realizes that deception and love are things that don't go together. They split, only to see each other three years later... And things get messy. Nicky is an accomplished con man. When a young grafter, Jess tries to take him, he sees right through her. He takes her under his wing and things between them get personal. When they pull a big score, Nicky decides to let her go because he thinks getting involved with her is not good. Three years later, Nicky's working for a guy to give a competitor some false info. But before he begins, he discovers Jess is with the guy and it ticks him off. He tries to apologize but she doesn't want to accept. — rcs0411@yahoo.com Nicky is a con artist whose role is deceiving people for a living but when he meets a young aspiring con artist named Jesse and takes her under his wing he discovers he let her in on so many levels and decides to let her go. When they meet again 3 years later he does everything he can to win her back. — alisondifor Nicky has studied the science of human nature his whole life, and understands precisely how to earn anyone's trust, or fool them into never noticing he's stealing their watch, or wallet, or anything they might have that Nicky can sell. In the movie's opening sequence, he's eating at a New York restaurant when the gorgeous Jess approaches his table and asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend so that she can avoid a particularly determined guy at the bar who won't stop hitting on her. The two of them hit it off, but he quickly figures out that she's running a scam on him and soon turns the tables on her and her partner. Undaunted, Jess begs Nicky to teach her what he knows about the criminal life, and he brings her in on a plan to steal from as many people as possible during Super Bowl week in New Orleans. She turns out to be a natural, and quickly learns the ropes of this unscrupulous world. Nicky and Jess seem to be falling for each other, but Nicky's actions at the end of their New Orleans trip force Jess to reassess their relationship. Three years later, Nicky enters into a deal with Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro), a wealthy playboy who has a software program that will help his Formula 1 team triumph. Nicky agrees to help Garriga sell a fake version of the program to his competitors, but as the plan goes into motion he discovers Jess and Garriga are a couple. As old feelings complicate the new arrangement, Nicky must also contend with the no-nonsense Owens (Gerald McRaney), Garriga's head-of-security who openly distrusts Nicky..