Lacks a tight grip.

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2013)

Incoherent and pointless. That's the two words for me to describe this movie. Absolute lack of charm in a movie demanding one. A 75 million dollar budget spent ridiculously. Both me and my girlfriend left the theater with a bad taste, feeling we have chosen the wrong movie to watch.
I was deceived by the trailer, the relatively good IMDb rating and the majority of good reviews. I didn't expect a masterpiece (based on the reviews), but it turned out to be much worse.
The plot has some originality and it's mildly entertaining throughout but never lifting, never intriguing and never building real suspense. So when the end came there was almost nothing to look for. The resolution was quite bad, very loose, having a weak logical connection to the rest of the plot. Unfortunately, because earlier parts of the movie never built any suspense, I wasn't even disappointed.
I think the director is to blame for all of the movies' faults. First is the lack of details. Sure, some of the tricks are shown, but some are not (how did they have access to bank accounts? how did they show immediate change of numbers on paper?). Some of the scenes look very awkward and very unrealistic (the chase part, all the last show). The second fault is the focus on the characters. Upon reading the plot and seeing the trailer, I expected the magicians to be in the center of the plot, but the focus is clearly not on them. Their characters lack substance and I ended up not caring about them throughout the entire film. The third fault is the CGI and the flashy lights. There is not much of them, but when they are present, they are boring and redundant. They didn't try to make them interesting, but to fill some space. The fourth issue is regarding the plot. There is no clear balance of power between the characters. What are the motives of each characters? What stands behind their actions? And the one-line explanations at the end to those question is just not enough.
There is a good amount of reviewers here praising the movie, and so the score is probably representing the average. However, in my opinion, anyone who likes the movies to have a strong logic, with down to earth approach and with things to be explained (and not just happen somehow), should skip this (at least at cinema). To make my point, I loved 'Prestige' and 'Oceans' 11' and I didn't like 'The Illusionist' for the reasons above.