The real trick was making so many great actors so terrible.

Rating: 1/10 (17 June 2013)

I'm just after leaving an advance showing of Now You See Me and I think it was horrendously bad. Just awful, truly terrible in so many areas, some being:
Dialogue- This reeked of laziness. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine's dialogue especially. It was wooden, inauthentic and the sort of dialogue that was so obvious that a child could figure it out from the context in the film. If they needed to say have the dialogue that was being said in this film, weeeeeellll, you're doing it wrong. Subtext anyone?
Characterisation- Again, really lazy. Every single character in the film was one dimensional with not even a HINT of a human variability or individuality. If some is a 'baddie', all he does is bad things. The 'romantic interest' runs around after our protagonist lovingly. The Four Horsemen magicians also I couldn't have cared less for. Worse still, I didn't care about a single thing any of them did.
Plot- I thought about this on the way to my car after leaving. Few major flaws. One, there was no tension at all for pretty much all of the film. You had the Four Horsemen magicians running about like Robin Hood and you were kinda rooting for them somewhat. Then, two, you had Ruffalo and the French lady running around trying to catch them, who you were also kind of behind too. There was only one real 'baddie' in Michael Caine but he was a cursory villain and not the main event really. Ruffalo's 'revenge' against the safe maker whose faulty safe killed his father was pulled out of nowhere. Even at the end there was no alteration in the states of our characters. The good guys stayed good just like they'd been at the start (why did I watch this film again?).
Cinematography- This wasn't as bad the elements above but there was definitely a spot when Ruffalo was in New Orleans standing street level among cars when I probably physically squinted and thought 'sweet lord, what is this film trying to do to me?'.
Overall, I'd say avoid this film. Weak writing, weak performances from great actors (who i don't blame), pointless plot. Worst film I've seen in a while. Sorry :(