Pretty but empty and pointless

Rating: 1/10 (4 June 2016)

This started out with promise and ended flat, lame, hollow and just pointless. Rather than list the MANY awful gaping holes in the plot, the awful errors of continuity, the nothing attempt at romance, I will summarise my feelings about this movie simply.
Unlike the Prestige, The Illusionist and Oceans Eleven, which remain some of the best magic / heist movies ever made, and which this director possibly hoped to emulate (and failed abysmally), the NYSM director takes a lot of fairly decent ideas about magic and heists, waves them about tantalisingly in front of the audience with flashing lights, sound effects and lasers, and then sits down and says, "OK. It's over now. You can go home." There is no decent, fulfilling conclusion. The movie just ends with a limp attempt at resolution that fails utterly.
All of the stupidly impossible plot twists, the simply ridiculous car chase and coming back from the dead, the absurd misdirection, the lame romance, and the directorial hand-waving end with nothing more than a puddle on the floor.
The characters are flat. The plot absurd. No-one cares.
Don't waste your time.