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75Doesn't reach for reality; it's a deliberate attempt to look and feel like a 1940s social problems picture, right down to the texture of the color photography.
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75The result would be an important drama if the screenplay (based on an early Arthur Miller novel) didn't lapse into preachiness and imprecision at times.
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75Obviously a labor of love for all involved, including GOP mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg, who bankrolled the production and receives full producer credit. He deserves it.
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75About American anti-Semitism, but it's not a typical genteel "cause" movie.
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75A cautionary tale that's harrowing, heartbreaking and -- especially given the times, when Americans seem all-too-ready to once again judge people as a threat solely by their appearance -- disturbingly resonant.
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70Yes, the movie is obvious at time, banging you over the head with its message, and the use of shadows on a wall can seem overly broad. But these are small complaints when compared to the film's many strengths.
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63It's a good film but an over-obvious one. I wish I'd liked it more.
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63This film and Miller's vision remind us of the danger of giving in to fear.
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63Feels somehow incomplete. It may be that its visual metaphor is more effective in literature than in film.
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63Two constants: good acting and an old-fashioned preachiness that backfires.
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60A hyperreal, visually layered period style that finds film noir shadows creeping in at the edges of a blue-sky, get-along-to-go-along America.
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60Dern and Macy give doughty performances in schematic roles, but glasses or no, these have to be two of the least Semitic-looking actors in American movies.
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60The movie's surreal style, with its film-noir camerawork and ominous lighting, turns the story into a fable about fear and nonconformism, and Mr. Macy's and Ms. Dern's carefully shaded caricatures match the mood.
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60This insidiously complex satire is filled with apparent digressions, and our complete identification with the man occurs so gradually that it's impossible to pinpoint just when our previous disdain becomes a position of relative comfort.
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58The script is full of holes and the premise is not especially credible.
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50Only David Paymer -- and the actor formerly known as the singer Meat Loaf, playing Newman's suspicious neighbor, ring true.
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50Seems embalmed in its own time, an earnest and handsomely crafted museum piece, not an urgent transposition of Miller's moral outrage to the new century.
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50Even if they're on the side of the angels, 106 minutes is a long time to keep this sermon going.
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50The film is rich in period detail and a keen visual sense of irony, but it's curiously static; scenes that blister the pages of Miller's novel barely move.
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50A movie worth viewing. Besides, it's the only movie to boast NYC millionaire mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg as its executive producer.
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50No denying the relevance of the tale.
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50Works better as a subject for high school study rather than lasting art.
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50The topic certainly suits the times, but the director's approach is as alienating as it is old-fashioned.
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40Relevant message aside, there's no good reason to sit through photographer Neal Slavin's directorial debut.
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40While Macy is persuasive, much of Focus is not.
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30A stilted, heavy-handed parable about fascistic intolerance.
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25Has a topsy-turvy sense of injustice.