Movies: Will Smith’s Focus Shows his Strength

The new Will Smith movie, Focus, opened below expectations over this past weekend and entertainment experts started salivating over the prospect of the decline of yet another box office superstar.

Before getting into why Focus is a smart move for Mr. Smith, I want to make clear how strongly I feel about these entertainment so-called experts. These know-nothing, do-less, talking heads with nothing in their heads, morons spend their entire lives talking about the actions, or lack thereof, of other people while contributing nothing to society.

So, in general, responding to anything these idiots say is a fool’s errand. This post, however, isn’t about them but about Will Smith and how he is doing the smart thing by moving away from big science fiction movies into smaller budgeted flicks.

Since 2008, Mr. Smith has been the lead in three movies: Men in Black 3, After Earth and Focus.

The first two were big budget science fiction movies and creatively bankrupt. While Men in Black 3 made money, it had no imagination while After Earth had nothing and flopped badly.

So, what does Will Smith do? He re-evaluates. He moves away from this genre. He signs three relatively low-budgeted non-special effects laden movies: Focus, Concussion and The American Can.

Neither one had a chance of opening at over $20 million but are different from his usual movies thereby giving him a creative reboot and reminding Smith’s audience that he can be effective in “regular” movies.

This is a plan that McConaughey followed and which ended up revitalizing his career and winning him an Oscar. Will Smith won’t get that far probably but making changes to a career strategy is a welcome move for one of our most charismatic stars.

Oh, and if the fans want to see Smith in a big-budget hard action movie, well, Suicide Squad comes out next year.