I Wanted to Like This More

Rating: 6/10 (25 August 2015)

Now You See Me is a fun movie that keeps you interested until the end. The cast is superb and the acting is great. The premise is an interesting one, but the big twist at the end really ruined the movie for me.
Spoilers:
It's obvious from the first scenes that there is a mystery man behind everything in the movie. You, the viewer, are left to guess who that is. They really push you into believing it is the female Interpol agent, but that really was too obvious. You might also think it was Morgan Freeman, but it's Mark Ruffalo, who is the head of the investigation into the heists.
There were many coincidences and perfectly-timed events that had to happen for the movie to play out like it did. For one, before Ruffalo's character set all these things in motion, how would he know he would be the lead for the investigation? During the whole movie, his character does things that are inexplicable if he was really the master magician behind everything.
Yes, you can explain away his persistence in trying to catch the 4 Horsemen in that he wanted to test them, but other actions don't make sense, like getting drunk at a bar after a failure to catch the thieves, or browbeating the female Interpol agent because he "believes" she's in cahoots with the 4 Horsemen. This twist just seemed too forced. Like the writers really wanted to surprise you, so they make it impossible to ever suspect Ruffalo's character. The result is that you feel cheated. This isn't an ego thing, I enjoy a good twist, but it has to be reasonable, and it just wasn't here.
At other times, you really have to suspend your disbelief for the movie to work. Franco's character happens to escape a certain way just when an FBI unmarked car pulls up. He later escapes by having an identical car set up on the Brooklyn Bridge. In order for this to work, they would have had to know the exact make and model (and color) of the FBI car that would be pulling up at the complete other end of the building. I hate to feel like I'm overthinking the writers, but I think they overthought the movie. Keep it simple and this movie would have been a lot better.