Focus

During an age of rampant computer hacking and cybercrime, Focus is almost a throwback with its roots in the old-fashioned art of the pickpocket.

The characters in this globetrotting thriller engage in identity theft and other high-tech gambits as well, but it’s all essentially based on the ability to rob someone through deception and hands-on grifting.

That’s what helped build the empire of Nicky (Will Smith), a master con artist who drinks and gambles too much, but orchestrates the types of high-stakes schemes that reward his team handsomely. After a chance encounter in New Orleans, he strikes up a romance with Jess (Margot Robbie), who finds his line of work alluring. She proves to be a natural, but Nicky dumps her after she no longer has professional value.

Flash forward three years, and the two reunite under unlikely circumstances in Argentina, where Nicky is trying to execute an elaborate con and Jess shows up as a femme fatale of sorts, with greed and revenge among her motives. The question is whether she has the chops to throw the unflappable Nicky off his game while trying to avoid rekindling their spark.

Despite an obvious age gap, Smith (who’s been in the gym) and Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) achieve a breezy chemistry that helps to make their shady characters more appealing than they should be. However, some of the periphery roles steal many of the most amusing lines, including Nicky’s overweight accomplice (Adrian Martinez) and a veteran swindler (Gerald McRaney) with a hard-nosed philosophical approach.

The screenplay by directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love) unveils a mostly clever series of ruses — including a Super Bowl scheme involving an overzealous Japanese gambler (B.D. Wong) that provides an early highlight. Yet after a while the betrayals, double-crosses, and dishonor among thieves start to feel more arbitrary, exposing the holes in the plot, which boils down to the distribution of an algorithm used to technologically accelerate racecars. It’s the equivalent of a stolen computer chip, which is the old standby for films such as this.

So this is pretty familiar territory. Like its characters, Focus is slick, manipulative and emotionally detached. By the end, it feels as though moviegoers are the ones who need to check their pockets.

Rated R, 104 minutes.