"The closer you think you are,the less you'll actually see."

Rating: 8/10 (29 August 2015)

Talking to a family friend about a friends upcoming birthday,I was happily caught by surprise,when he revealed that he had picked up a film to give as a gift,due to it having "inspired" the Bollywood flick Dhoom 3,which led to me getting ready to step into the magic circle.
The plot:
Successfully performing their own acts, magicians J. Daniel Atlas/ Jack Wilder/Henley Reeves and Merritt McKinney each receive a mysterious card,which contain details to a hidden location,where they meet a benefactor.
1 Year later:
Gaining sponsorship from wealthy insurance magnate Arthur Tressler,the group perform their first ever show in Las Vegas. Expertly using their showmanship ,the gang announces that their final act for the night is a bank robbery.Getting an audience member on stage,the group teleport the audience member to his bank in Paris,where he activates an air duct that vacuums up the cash,which causes it to showers onto the Las Vegas audience.As news that an actual robbery has taken place, FBI agent Dylan Rhodes is joined by Interpol agent Alma Dray,and given the task of finding out how the robbery took place.
Interviewing the group,Rhodes and Dray find each of the gang to be holding their cards close to their chests,which leads to them being freed over a lack of evidence.Keeping a close watch on their activates,Rhodes and Dray attend the gangs second Vegas performance.Pulling Arthur Tressler up on stage,they allow him to bask in their showmanship.As Tressler starts to enjoy the adoring crowd,the group reveal a new trick up their sleeves.
View on the film:
Whilst the guys do dominate the flick,the two girls shine in magical performances,with the very pretty Isla Fisher (who almost drowned when a scene which has Henley Reeves fail to get out a water tank,turned into Fisher being unable to get out of a faulty tank) giving Reeves a sassy curl of the lips,whilst an elegant Mélanie Laurent gives the title a perfect French New Wave light touch.Always kept one step behind the magicians, Mark Ruffalo gives an excellent performance as Dylan Rhodes,thanks to Ruffalo avoiding the easy option of making Rhodes look like a hapless idiot,by displaying intense desperation in pulling the bottom card from everyone else's pack.
Reuniting from the Batman movies,Michael Caine & Morgan Freeman both give charming performances,with Caine barking orders at everyone,whilst Freeman walks across the title with a wide, charismatic grin. Addressing the viewer at the start of the film, Jesse Eisenberg gives a very good performance as J. Daniel Atlas,whose showmanship hides nerves of doubt over their tricks being a success,as Eisenberg's former Zombieland star Woody Harrelson chews the scenery with a hilariously dry wit.
Increasing the elaborateness of each magicians act,the screenplay by Ed Solomon/Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt casts a dazzling twist ending over the film,which whilst coming from a rather left-field position,gives the magic an unexpected darkness,as the writers reveal the "final trick" that the magicians have been playing from the very start.Whilst the writers do use magic to make some leaps in logic disappear,they keep the movie moving at a sparkling pace,by turning the magicians into a gang of outlaws,whose heists go from a misdirection bank robbery to transforming into falling money.
Capturing every wave of the wand,director Louis Leterrier and cinematographers Mitchell Amundsen & Larry Fong build a thrilling atmosphere with stylish frantic scatter-shot camera moves,as the gang casts their spells in order to stay ahead of the cops. Diving into Las Vegas,Leterrier brilliantly uses vast wide shots to capture the spectacle and every gasp that the audience makes,as Leterrier grips the viewer and casts a spell,which reveals that the closer you think you are, the less you'll actually see.