'Sharper' holds attention without living up to its title
Apple+
Do you want to think through the escape room or more calmly enjoy watching someone else do it?
If it’s the former, and you respond to movies that want to trick you by determining to out-smart everyone on screen first, you can probably set “Sharper” aside. That mindset — which is often just “don’t believe anyone about anything, and count on everything to flip in just a little while — requires a movie with more playful tricks and emotional investment, like the underrated “Focus.”
if you’re good with the latter, though, “Sharper” is well-acted and slickly executed, and the kind of just-OK movie for which the “rent it” designation was created (when rentals existed and people went to movie theaters and cheeseburgers cost a nickel, sonny).
Separating the script into chapters depending on which character is in focus, writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka far exceed their work on “The Sitter” with a story whose elegant construction probably overstates its complexity, but no worries: It’s passably enjoyable to watch as Sandra (Briana Middleton), Tom (Justice Smith), Max (Sebastian Stan) and Madeline (Julianne Moore) intertwine, with the validity of countless relationships in question and financial thievery ranging from hundreds to billions in play.
It’s hard not to wish that director Benjamin Caron was more concerned with motivations and less fixated on style; at nearly two hours, “Sharper” at times feels like a play that’s overcompensating for its basic characters with angles and lighting. But just because this isn’t the sort of movie that’s quite meant to be reasoned through doesn’t mean it’s dumb. Rather, driven by uniformly compelling performances, “Sharper” hinges on how easily emotion can make fools of us all.
And sometimes setting a game to an easier level isn’t so bad either.
B-
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