Name: Sharper
Director: Benjamin Caron
Released: 2023-02-17T20:44:35

In Sharper, various con artists rob wealthy individuals of their money and even engage in a tussle of wits with each other. The crime-thriller film is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Story

Tom (Justice Smith) and Sandra (Briana Middleton) meet at a bookstore owned by the former. They spend more together and start dating.

Sandra’s brother, Jason, is apparently in trouble with dangerous individuals over money and Tom decides to give her the amount as they’ve held her brother and are asking for ransom.

After taking the money, she is nowhere to be found. Sandra is revealed to be a con artist who was taught the dark arts by Max (Sebastian Stan).

He took her in as a regular convict and taught her how to pretend to be someone else entirely.

Max has another partner named Madeline (Julianne Moore). The three of them constantly backstab each other and try to take the money. Who will come out on top?

Performances

Middleton, Stan and Moore, who play the three con artists, capture the suave and stylish nature of their characters. But this just isn’t a challenging film in terms of performance.

Positives

The complicated relationship between the three main characters keeps the narrative constantly entertaining.

They’re feigning loyalties and backstabbing each other all through the course of the run time. In one particular instance, Madeline acts as if she’s Max’s mother for an act.

These sequences are creative and the one moments where the actors actually get to showcase their acting chops.

The character reveals are intriguing. Every character gets their own sequence of introduction and they all don’t show up from the start.

Negatives

The ending is one of the most predictable ones in recent films of the genre. It’s hard to even call it a thriller when you can see it coming from a mile away.

The character introductions or ‘chapters’ take up a lot of the screen time and you’re barely left with anything worthwhile in terms of the narrative.

Verdict

Sharper is an average film that never becomes ambitious enough to achieve anything. It’s just a few character introductions and a straightforward plotline.