Now You See Me

Synopsis: The Four Horsemen are a group of internationally renowned illusionists: Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco). Touring America, they pull off a series of daring heists disguised as awesome magic tricks. After a bank in Paris is robbed by “remote illusion” investigating FBI agent Dylan Hobbs (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner Parisian Interpol detective Alma (Melanie Laurent) call in the services of Thaddeus (Morgan Freeman), a famed magic debunker.  Are the Horsemen just thieves or is there really magic involved?

I’m a great fan of magic, but of course when we see illusions performed in film we ask ourselves, are they actual tricks, or CGI ?  The good news is that the actors apparently trained to perform many of their tricks live, (well so says the PR!) and certainly the film presents lots of treats for lovers of magic from the up-close-and-personal card tricks through to the grand David Copperfield style illusions.  

With a stunning cast, and magic tricks and a heist yarn teamed, I had high hopes for this film but was ultimately disappointed. The film opens well enough with each magician introduced to the audience via a scam or trick they are performing in a show or in a public place. Jack makes off with someone’s wallet, Merritt (who calls himself a “mentalist” – a modern term for hypnotist and mind-reader), reveals some poor sap’s affair in front of his wife, Henley escapes from a tank of piranhas, and Daniel, traditional card-sharp and spoon-bender, awes folks with his sleight-of-hand. The four are then brought together, via a mysterious invitation, and we cut to one year later. In Las Vegas, the now super-group calling themselves "The Four Horsemen" promise to rob a bank by remote control, and when they pull off the seemingly impossible we meet the other two principal characters: a sexy French cop (Laurent) and a cynical American cop (Ruffalo).

From that point things got a bit too convoluted for my liking. Plot-driven scripts can be all too clever for their own good and Now You See Me is as excessive as you could find in this department. I also found myself feeling slightly annoyed at the typological casting of Freeman as some sort of wise old uncle who always has a nostrum to spout. The hoped-for chemistry between Ruffalo and Laurent didn’t really work for me and when a car chase is introduced it starts to feel like the film-makers are just throwing things at the wall. There’s a heap of esoteric stuff like a secret magic society known as “The Eye”, though it never really gets integrated into the plot.

There’s also an important plot thread involving the Horsemen’s patron and head of an insurance company, Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), and whilst I love Caine, he too is always cast in the same mold these days (he played a very similar role in Christoper Nolan's magic-based film The Prestige). As the film becomes more and more frenetic, chasing through the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras and ending up on the New York rooftops for the final Big Trick along with the Big Reveal I started to think “gimme a break!”

Now You See Me certainly provides a pleasant couple of hours of entertaining escapism though the true magic of the movies is missing.  

Want more about this film?

Want something different?