Movie # 25 - Now You See Me

Egads, a whole month has gone by with no posts from me! Whoops.  I'm back though!

Now You See  Me is actually still showing in 1 or 2 cinemas, but be quick if you do decide to see it.

The latest offering from director Louis Leterrier (who directed Transporter 2, Clash of the Titans and what is often referred to as the good version of The Incredible Hulk) is an extremely slick tale of a group of four magicians brought together to pull off an audacious series of heists.  The movie starts out by introducing us to this group of magicians who all have very different talents: sleight of hand, escapology, illusion, mind reading.  They are brought together by a mysterious benefactor, with an invitation to an exclusive group if they can pull off his or her instructions.  The first big setpiece is the robbing of a French bank by an audience member from a magic show in the US.  This attracts the attention of Interpol, who send an agent (Melanie Laurent, best known for Inglourious Basterds) to work with an FBI Agent (Mark Ruffalo, who ironically now plays the Hulk in The Avengers series) to pin the crime on the magicians.

With no evidence to make the charges stick, the '4 Horsemen' are soon free and promoting their next big stunt.  Their major financial backer is on board (a small role for Michael Caine) and the FBI and Interpol agents are soon consulting a guy who used to be a magician but now debunks magic for his own highly profitable TV series (played by Morgan Freeman).  Will thinking about how the tricks are done help them catch the crooks in the act?  Well that is the great mystery that you have to solve in this movie before the big reveal at the end.

Now You See Me is one big magic trick of a movie. You think it's going to be one thing (good) but then it turns out to be something else (average).  The problem I think is that you just get so focused on solving the puzzle that you don't really enjoy the ride.  At least that is what happened to me.  But looking back, I think the major problem is that there are too many main characters in the film and you never really get to know any of them very well at all.  So you just don't really end up caring very much once the master magician shows his hand (boom boom!).  And thinking back over it, you're not really sure if all the tricks actually do work and whether the pieces of this particular puzzle do fit together.

One of my key reasons for looking forward to this movie was Jesse Eisenberg as one of the 4 magicians, along with Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco.  All strong actors, they actually get very little time to reveal any personality or motivation, as they are merely in service to the script and the twist.  So yes, I was more than a tad disappointed.  Ruffalo and Laurent are great as the increasingly confused and frustrated detectives, but in the end it's all style but no substance.

I'd give this 2.5 out of 5.