FOCUS - Will Smith the Genius Con Artist

I did not have the chance to watch this movie in theater last year, or it never played at all? Can not really be sure as even if it really played last year, then it did not make a wave of audience flocking to the theaters. Anyway, I watched this in HBO last night as it premiered for the first time on TV (they usually showed new movies every Saturday night at 8PM Indonesia time. So if you are not having any plan on Saturday night, and if you subscribe to cable TV, then it might be good for you to watch a "not so old" movie such as this one. 

Brief Story Line

Movie started with the scene of Nicky (played by Will Smith - Independence Day, Men In Black, etc) who was being seduced by a lady named Jess (played by Margot Robbie - The Wolf of Wallstreet, Suicide Squad) and "found out" by her "husband". Apparently Nicky knew from the beginning that he was being conned, so he even advised Jess to always focus during a con. Later, Nicky provided some inputs to Jess on how to be a better pick-pocket and also informed her that in this line of work, they must be ready for any kind of situation. Even Nicky's father during one of his con did the surprising thing by shooting his own father during a con gone wrong, to avoid them being caught. It was called the "Toledo Panic Button".

In next scenes, Nicky went to New Orleans and had big plans to score during a major football game. He was accompanied by Horst (his 2nd hand man) and Farhad (1 of his best partner). Jess who already made up her mind that she wanted to be part of Nicky's crew, tried to convince him that she was good enough. So as a test, Nicky asked Horst to see if she was able to pick pocket people which Jess successfully done so. With Jess becoming the newest member, Nicky soon felt emotional attachment, which was actually not a good idea in their line of business. Hence after finishing their biggest score and con together, they went on their separate ways.

Three years later in Buenos Aires, Nicky was being hired by Garriga (played by Rodrigo Santoro - 300 and others), a wealthy business man who owned a racing car team with a very good computerized racing system which all their competitors wanted to get their hands on. As part of the con, Nicky would sell a modified system to Garriga's fiercest competitor, McEwen which Nicky would keep the money, on top of what Garriga would pay. By doing so, Garriga wanted to get rid of his competition. In the con, Nicky would act like 1 of Garriga's disgruntled technician and to convince McEwen, they would do a dramatized "fight" during a party. However, all the plan go haywire as suddenly, out of nowhere, Jess showed up and kissed Garriga. The con also became more complicated with the extra suspicious Owens (played by Gerald McRaney), Garriga's head of security. 

So can Nicky go through with this con when his previous love interest showed up again? Is Nicky going to try win Jess' heart again? Find out all the cons until the end of the movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well, I personally quite enjoy the movie. As usual movie involving cons always intrigued us in the sense we are always kept guessing which one is a con and which one is real. We will never know who ends up being conned in the end. 

Even though the cons in this movie are not at the highest level but in the end, there were still plenty of twists and surprises to make it interesting.

I also found the supporting character Farhad (Adrian Martinez) fun to watch and Nicky's relationship with Jess interesting as well.

So if you happen to like this kind of genre, then maybe this one is an option for you to watch. As I said in the beginning, the film is playing in HBO and you definitely can watch it at least once a day during this whole week. It could be fun...

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

(TV SERIES) Sherlock - Season 2 and 3

After watching the first season of Sherlock (which I happened to reviewed earlier before), I could not stand not to watch the second season after that. So once I got the chance, I immediately start watching season 2 and continued to season 3 in less than a week time.

Brief Story Line (spoiler warning, particularly with reference to season 1)

Season 2:

If you already watched season 1, you would know that by the season finale, Sherlock and Watson were threatened Moriarty's men and Sherlock threatened back by aiming his gun towards the bomb near Moriarty's location. The 1st episode of season 2 continued where it left off. Moriarty got a phone call and decided he would not kill Sherlock and Watson after all, leaving both of them relieved. Later, Mycroft requested Sherlock to acquire "indecent" photos of certain high powered political person in England from a dominatrix lady named Irene Adler. She was portrayed as a very smart woman and seemed able to match Sherlock's brilliance through her wit. I felt this episode was funny and enjoyable to watch, with Sherlock seemed to be a little bit attracted by Irene, even Watson and Mycroft can also sensed about this. The ending provide some shocking scenes as well.

Second episode titled "The Hound of Baskerville" was inspired by the same novel published in 1902. However, they made it into the modern world. Story was about Henry Knight who brought Sherlock the mystery about a giant hound that murdered his father when he was a young boy in a small town near Dartmoor where a military base called Baskerville was located. This story was different from other Sherlock's stories as it had a few element of thriller and suspense. The brilliance of Sherlock was not shown too much but it also showed that Sherlock was a human being after all as for the first time ever, he doubted his own mind. 

The season finale again pitted Sherlock with Moriarty. In this episode, Moriarty once again showed his brilliance by getting himself captured by police only to show Sherlock that he was capable of found not guilty during trial. This is where it gets interesting as Moriarty was able to put doubts in the eyes of police and press about Sherlock's ability. The doubts were so high that Sherlock had no choice but to run away from police hands when he was suspected of coordinating all crimes for him to solve in order to bring fame to himself. The episode ended with very very huge surprise and upset for the audience. Once again, I felt the thrill and excitement watching this episode and could not wait to watch the 3rd season.

Season 3 (spoiler warning)

The 1st episode of this season happened around 2 years after the supposed "suicide" of Sherlock Holmes, where he was finally asked by Mycroft to return to England to solve a possible terrorist attack. Watson who never knew about the fake suicide had finally returned to 221B Baker Street to meet with Mrs. Hudson and informed her that he was going to get married. Sherlock wanted to surprise Watson during the time when Watson wanted to propose to his girlfriend Mary which of course became hilarious as Watson understandably very very upset and angry for being kept in the dark more than 2 years. However, after Mary convinced Watson, he was of course coming back to help Sherlock on this case. I enjoyed this episode particularly seeing Watson's expressions when he found out Sherlock still alive. The case itself felt a little bit like background in this episode.

The 2nd episode was about Watson getting married to Mary. Before the wedding party, Sherlock and Watson went to help a British soldier who felt like being stalked and finally found dead when he was taking a shower in a locked bathroom. This was told through a flashback by Sherlock during his wedding speech as a best man for the wedding. Sherlock was unable to solve that case apparently. Later on, he also told another case involving some women who felt they were dating a ghost of a deceased man. This case was not able to be solved by Sherlock as well. When Sherlock finally wanted to put up the toast, he realized that there was going to be a murder during the wedding. So the wedding ceremony became like a "performance" by Sherlock. I enjoyed this episode a lot and I felt that this was a very touching episode. It truly showed the affection of Sherlock to his only friend while Watson also really loved Sherlock as his very best friend.

Finally the season finale. This episode introduced us to a new villain who was very obnoxious and snobby named Magnussen, a newspaper mogul who was able to know every dirty little secret of all powerful people in England and possibly the world. Sherlock who was asked by 1 of the person blackmailed, wanted to retrieve the letter consisting incriminating information which supposedly locked in the room of Magnussen's office. This episode also showed Sherlock having a relationship with Janine, Mary's bridesmaid from episode 2. When Sherlock and Watson was trying to locate the letter, there was a shocking moment when Magnussen was under threat and later Sherlock got shot by that person. Ultimately there were lots of twists and brilliance of Sherlock and of course Magnussen as the main villain. I also enjoyed this episode a lot and was amazed that I could still feel surprised on the story lines and the ending.

End of Brief Story Line

After watching 3 seasons of this TV Series, I felt that the 2nd and the 3rd season was exciting, a little bit darker, but also had some touching moments compared to the 1st season. However, even though they were still very very good seasons, I still feel that the 1st season was the best of them all.

Of course, if you are a fan of films where the detective is as smart as Sherlock Holmes, this TV Series still is a very recommended one to watch. My suggestion is to watch 1 episode a day or maximum 2, so that the episodes can be better absorbed by our mind, coz I personally felt a little bit overwhelmed when trying to watch 3 episodes in 1 night.

Btw, till now the 4th season has not aired yet. So at the moment, the season finale of 3rd season was the last episode that we could watch of this series. I hope they won't suddenly cancel it as it would leave a huge cliffhanger.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

CRIMINAL - The Mission is in the Memory

During the past weekend and this super long weekend in Indonesia, there are not a lot of options for movie enthusiast like me. Between Captain America: Civil War and AADC2 which are occupying most of the theaters in the 3 major cineplexes, there was a new Hollywood movie released on Wednesday titled Criminal.

It is surprising to see such a large ensemble cast in a movie which did not have a lot of hypes when it was shown in Indonesia. Even to watch this movie, it takes a bit of an effort since there were only like 11 cinemas showing it in Jakarta. Ok, so let's move on to the movie itself.

Brief Story Line (warning some spoilers, so you can skip this part if you are not interested)

Movie is about a CIA agent named Bill Pope (played by Ryan Reynolds - Deadpool etc) who took a bag full of money and passport from some place. He then called his wife Jill (played by Gal Gadot - FF5 & 6 and as Wonder Woman in DC movies) and his daughter Emma before noticing he was being chased by a group of bad people.

In the CIA headquarter in London, their leader Quaker (played by Gary Oldman - The Dark Knight trilogy etc) was worried about the safety of Bill so he sent a team to assist Bill. However, the main villain Heimbahl - an anarchist who did not trust governments was able to intercept and caught Bill. He wanted to find out where Jan Stroop aka Dutchman, a hacker who managed to have the wormhole to the weapon/missile system was hiding. If the codes should fall into the wrong hands, this would potentially create chaos and war.

When Quaker's team finally able to track down Bill's whereabouts, they were too late and he was found dead at the scene. Later CIA looked for the help of Dr. Franks (played by the veteran Tommy Lee Jones) to retract Bill's memory from his brain and put into someone else which was basically what Dr. Franks 18 years research all about. Though this was never experimented on actual human beings, but it appeared to be the only option then to find out Dutchman's location. However, the trick was to find the person able to receive Bill's memories. It should be a person whose frontal lobe brain not properly developed. The best available candidate was a psychopath who did not have emotion and could not differentiate between right and wrong, a criminal named Jericho Stewart (played by Kevin Costner - The Bodyguard, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood etc).

At first when the operation was done, it appeared unsuccessful and Quaker was very upset. So he instructed Jericho to be returned to prison. But apparently it was successful as Jericho started to have some of Bill's memories and feelings coming to him piece by piece. Unfortunately one of the thing he remembered was the bag full of money which for him was very interesting. Hence, start his mission to look for the money by looking from various places, starting from Bill's home where Jill & Emma still staying.

This act was found out by Quaker's team and they realized he started to have Bill's memory. And Heimbahl also managed to learnt about this info. Hunted by Quaker & his CIA team and also Heimbahl's assassins, Jericho tried all his best to avoid them while looking for the money. This was also made complicated with the feelings he started to have from Bill's memory, especially for Jill and Emma.

So can Jericho outrun all of them? Can he get the money he wanted so bad? What will happen to him and will he be having Bill's memory permanently or will he lose it? Find them all in the movie.

End of Brief Story Line

To all of you looking for something different than the 2 biggest movies playing in theater now, I believe this can be an option. It is not a spectacular action movie. It is not a pure science fiction either (even though transferring brain memory to another would classify as that). I think this one is more like a thriller, with some actions but not special effects kind/cgi kind.  

Of course there were certain parts where I felt a bit unrealistic (the ending part) from my opinion. But hey, this was not supposed to be that kind of movie. So just sit back and enjoy the show. Btw, if you are a big fan of Kevin Costner, this would feel a little bit different from his other films, coz he has to be a psychopath in this movie, so his actions were sadistic, but somehow it made him likeable to us audiences as well. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars