'Sharper' is my kind of movie. But there's a reason we don't get many of them these days, which I'll get to shortly. It saddens me but I also completely understand it. Still, this movie was a lot of fun and is the kind of film I'm happy to accept will never be perfect.
The problem with the con-artist genre was that the audience became too aware of every move in the playbook. I never call films predictable - and I detest it when people do, because a simple possibility running through your brain at some point in the run time and turning out to be correct does not make something predictable - however this is the kind of film where I can at least forgive that word being thrown around here and there.
Which is ironic because these films were basically designed to be the least predictable of all the genres. They were designed to hit you with a dozen twists, each more shocking than the last. But soon audiences caught on that everything was the opposite of what it seemed and suddenly the films weren't as fun any more.
So anyway, back to 'Sharper'. We see the film from each character's perspective in different segments. It's a really good format for a film like this. We are always getting new information, but we are also seeing information we thought we already knew from a different and altered point of view. It does a great job of keeping the audience invested and on their toes.
The film has good dialogue, a good cast and great pacing. The two hours will fly by even though there is almost nothing in the way of action sequences. For a genre that some might consider DOA, I think 'Sharper' was a pretty good all around effort. 8/10.
