Sharper Movie Review

Everyone loves a movie about a good con job. “The Usual Suspects,” “Catch Me If You Can,” and “A Fish Called Wanda” are a few of my favorite films of the genre. Of course, it’s best when you don’t see the sting coming too quickly. Here, it’s all over the place, but what sets this apart from some of the more recent films centered around the con artist is that you can’t quite tell who, in the end, will be the final mark. Or is everyone the mark?

Done right, movies about confidence games will keep you guessing all the way through to the end. That’s hard to do. While this has more of an uninspired ending, the one thing it isn’t is tedious or dry. The soundtrack and score are used flawlessly to enhance scenes to help give the audience a chill down their spine. It’s also just good music! For example, when an exceptionally large grift goes well, our characters dance to the song “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley.

Director Benjamin Caron, who directed eleven episodes of “The Crown,” began the film by defining a “Sharper.” It means “One Who Lives by Their Wits.” It’s another term for a scammer. Good luck attempting to guess who in this movie those words best describe.
Caron introduced us to Tom and Sandra. He owns a bookstore that sells used and rare books. She’s a student at NYU who pops in looking for a book to help her with her thesis on “Redefining Radicalism – The Rise of Black Feminism in American Literature.”
He’s immediately impressed with her. They’re both attractive and you can tell they seem to think so, too. He wastes no time asking her out. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, so through the use of different characters we meet along the way, we get the complete picture of who is playing who and how this other person blends into the story.

It’s hard to be different when every storyline has been done before, but “Sharper” manages to succeed enough to hold your focus. We meet Tom (Justice Smith), Sandra (Briana Middleton), Max (Sebastian Stan) and Madeline (Julianne Moore), jumping back and forth, advancing a little more into the lives of these individuals and how good or bad they are.

Playing agreeable and generous helps in the double-cross. More than one of these people desperately wants to be rich, but when offered what they desire, the trick is to turn it down to appear humble. The narrative jumps into high gear when this scheme is worked to perfection against Richard Hobbes (Lithgow), Madeline’s target. What happens next, with its multiple plot lines coming together, is a world of twists, making “Sharper” an excellent choice for Apple to present to its customers.