Almost invariably, we root for the con artist.
Seldom does the ingenuity and cleverness of a good hustler, card shark or con man not win us over. They are, of course, walking metaphors for the movies. Through finesse and daring, they pull the wool over our eyes while emptying our pockets.
They’re also great roles for actors, our best liars, to showcase their powers of slight-of-hand seduction and subtle transformation. Sharper, a fitfully delicious pile of deceptions and double-crosses, is made with evident appreciation for the genre. It opens with a definition of its title — “one who lives by their wits” — and Sharper, too, skates by nimbly enough by coasting on its cast’s smarts.
Photo: Reuters
“Sharper,” which opens in theaters Friday and lands Feb. 17 on Apple TV+, is a slinky, slick caper that finds ways to distort expectations while unfolding a puzzle-box narrative. Before its lesser third act, Sharper — propelled especially by the performances of newcomer Briana Middleton and the more veteran Sebastian Stan — manages to juggle its plot twists with panache.
It opens with a seemingly sweet note of romance. Sandra (Middleton) breezes into a used bookshop on the Lower East Side to pick up a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. She tells the guy behind the counter — Tom (Justice Smith) — that she’s getting her PhD in Black feminist studies. The scene could be a meet cute for a bookish romcom. But given that opening title card, we’re on guard for the scam. She’s forgotten money — is that the play? A free book? They go on a date and later return to the store to hold in their hands a first edition of Jane Eyre. Maybe that’s the goal? A fiendish scheme to swipe rare Charlotte Brontes? But as a character says later in Sharper, if you’re going to steal, steal big.
Sharper, structured as a series of vignettes each titled after a particular character, unspools as a series of ever-expanding cons. First, there is Sandra, in need of US$350,000 to rescue her drug addict brother from his debtors. Once that plays out, the second chapter rewinds to Sandra’s past, and her chance encounter with a skilled grifter, Max (Stan). He takes Sandra under his wing to school her on the art of deception. His system starts, kind of wonderfully, with reading the newspaper: “So you can lie about anything.” And he’s single-minded about the work.
“I don’t watch movies,” Max says. “They’re a waste of time.”
First off, ouch. But this is also an early hint, in Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka’s layered screenplay, that the grifters of Sharper — unlike, say, Paul Newman of The Sting or Leonardo DiCaprio of Catch Me if You Can — are a more sober variety of fabulist, less a stand-in for the make-believe of movies than a concept to question and interrogate.
As Sharper, smoothly helmed by British TV director Benjamin Caron, continues to widen, it brings in more characters and backstories, including a New York socialite (Julianne Moore, also a producer) who’s dating a billionaire widower (John Lithgow). But the progression begins to work against the film. As Sharper turns increasingly melodramatic, we’re well-conditioned by then to look for the con, and see it coming a long ways out. The streetwise characters — especially the appealingly rigorous Max, who seems like he walked in from a Paul Schrader film or a David Mamet noir — also wouldn’t be so easily duped by the late plot maneuvers. After a promising start, Sharper grows duller.
But there’s plenty here to savor. Middleton, who had a small role in George Clooney’s The Tender Bar, brings such a shape-shifting radiance to the film that when she’s not present, the movie sags even as its star power increases. And Stan, an actor I’ve not previously had a strong sense of, has never been so arresting on screen. His cool nonchalance gives Sharper a bracing edge. The scenes that pair Middleton and Stan together are its most potent. Plus, who can resist a con that includes, to pose as a PhD student, cramming great quotes of literature? Oh, the riches that can be unlocked by Call me Ishmael.
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend