Sypnosis: Neal Slavin's surreal adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1945 novel Focus is as didactic as it is genuinely harrowing. Written as an illumination of the rampant anti-Semitism that Miller experienced as a young man in wartime New York, the film is a suffocating fable of the perils of conformism, which repeatedly corners the viewer into wondering what he or she would do in Lawrence Newman's shoes. Set near the end of World War II, Focus posits a grim, nightmarish outcome to the end of the war where patriotism has eroded into xenophobia and growing paranoia.
