Now You See Me

Rating: 4/10 (12 March 2014)

From director Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2, The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans), the trailer for this film looked really good, an all star cast in a film combining magic with a heist, I was certainly hoping for it to be slick and fun. Basically four small-time down on their luck magicians, J. Daniel Atlas (The Social Network's Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Confessions of a Shopaholic's Isla Fisher) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco, James's brother) are summoned and brought together to an obscure place, and a year later the four are performing in Las Vegas as "The Four Horsemen". They have become big time stage illusionists filling venues, sponsored by British millionaire Arthur Tressler (Sir Michael Caine), but one particular show gains the attention of the authorities, when they perform a trick where audience member Étienne Forcier (José Garcia) is teleported from the Las Vegas stage to a bank in Paris, France, and robbing Tressler's account the stolen money showers the audience, but this heist did in fact happen for real. FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and French Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) are partnered to investigate how this trick was pulled off, but they get completely lost along the way, not just by the four performers managing to use their skills of misdirection and illusion to get away every time, but by the mysterious insights from professional illusion exposer Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman). After many chases and opportunities to try and catch the foursome, all of which lead the cops to the wrong locations and get them more and more confused, it does appear that Jack is killed in a car crash, while J. Daniel, Merritt and Henley announce they will perform one last show to an audience, Dylan is sure he can get one step ahead of them, but he is still not able to keep up. In the end however, it turns out that Thaddeus was the one being tricked all along, he looks to have been set up by The Four Horsemen having his car stashed with stolen money, and in fact Dylan has been the mastermind behind all the schemes the magicians have got away with, he wanted to get to Thaddeus for humiliating his father years ago, and Tressler's company refused to pay his father's death insurance, Alma finds out but does not turn Dylan in. Also starring rapper Common as Evans and The Adjustment Bureau's Michael Kelly as Agent Fuller. All the actors are chosen pretty well for their parts, the film certainly has good use of special effects, camera tricks and editing, and there are small bits and pieces of a good story, but unfortunately it felt very predictable most of the time, there was too much going on, it got a little confusing, and I just couldn't shake off the feeling that the film was lame and boring, and I don't understand why they would bother making a sequel like they plan to, a sort of alright crime thriller. Okay!