Quick Flicks: Focus

Confronting anti-Semitic bigotry in World War II America, Focus is particularly timely. And because its message is so resonant right now, I really wanted to love it. Unfortunately Focus, which is based on the Arthur Miller novel, is full of banalities and offers no new insights into the world it is portraying. Upon buyin a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, personnel manager Larry Newman (William H. Macy) is told that he looks "too Jewish" and will give the wrong impression to prospective customers for his firm. The movie follows cowardly Newman as he makes a paranoid descent into the realities of prejudice. It poses questions about what creates prejudice and how we react to it and answers them simple-mindedly. In a time when racial prejudice has become particularly multi-faceted, it is irritating to see it presented so one-dimensionally.