Review: Now You See Me

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★

Caper films are fun. Even when they’re bad. That’s the simplest explanation I can give for my feelings toward “Now You See Me.” It’s always entertaining when you see a complex scheme pulled off in a film and you’re not quite sure how they got away with it. But when the movie strays off its mark and tries to be something its not, that’s when things come undone. Its the same type of thing that plagues many of Hollywood’s films today. It’d be so nice if the studios just spent a little more of their hard earned cash in the story department, but that’s a long winded conversation for another time.

Four street corner magicians – J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) – are all rounded up by an unseen and unknown individual as the movie begins. Together, they form magic act dubbed The Four Horsemen.

One year later, they are all very famous magicians performing nightly in Las Vegas thanks the backing of millionaire Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine). One night in front of the their live audience, they bring up a man on stage who assists them in robbing millions in euros from a bank in France. This catches the attention of the FBI. Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is assigned to investigate the magicians with the help of a new agent at Interpol, Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent).

With no evidence to hold them down, the Four Horsemen are released to continue their magical bank-robbing extravaganza. Rhodes, Dray and the rest of the FBI are shadowing them the rest of the way. They’re also being followed by Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), famous debunker of magic tricks looking to cash in on exposing how the Four Horsemen pull of their seemingly inexplicable tricks.

What starts as a typical caper film quickly collapses when it tries to add too much to an already crowded screenplay. I’m all for layers in a story that makes it more complex and compelling, but its unnecessary when it starts to take away from the substance of the primary plotline.

On its surface, “Now You See Me” is a typical heist film, much in the same vein as something like “Ocean’s Eleven.” The vast difference between the two films is that “Ocean’s” established a plot, established a motive, gathered the characters together and showed them pulling off the heist. “Now You See Me” works the same way, but feels horribly unnatural.

Motive, for example, is established - at the end. By that time, interest and empathy had dwindled away. Not to mention, the film has shifted its primary focus from the Four Horsemen to the FBI and back again at least two or three times. Its hard to connect with a story when the story itself doesn’t know what it wants to be or who its hero should be.

I feel like this film was put together with too much haste, and that the only reason for making it was to gather a wide range of talented actors and actresses. I never knew who I was rooting for watching all of them on the screen at the same time. None of these actors have ever really played a villainous role so its difficult to see any of them in a negative light, particularly when the screenplay is written with humorous dialogue every other line.

No one seems to flex their acting talents to the best of their abilities. At times it almost feels like Mark Zuckerberg is doing magic tricks alongside Woody Boyd. No one brought anything new to the table that we haven’t already seen from other movies or TV shows.

There’s just too much of a disconnection from beginning to end. And just like all caper movies, the ending is the revelation; how did they do it? While any questions that might pop up throughout the movie seem to have an answer, the big reveal is comically head scratching.

But “Now You See Me” isn’t a total waste. As a sucker for heist movies such as this, I did find the majority of this film relatively enjoyable. The heist is pulled off, money is stolen and you’re left there wondering how. They show how its done, and you’re left amazed. And unlike “Ocean’s Eleven” which shows one heist with one big reveal at the end, “Now You See Me” shows three separate heists. Sure they’re using visual effects and CGI to make the tricks seem real, but that’s what magic is anyway. Just a bunch of illusions to make things look like something unexplainable just happened.

The real magic is how such a large group of talented group of actors were all talked in to performing in such a dull and poorly written film. As entertaining as some parts may be, “Now You See Me” is just another example of how Hollywood still likes to put all their flair before their stories.