Tricked Out

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2013)

(May contain SPOILERS) One of the most annoying things about "Now You See Me" is lens flare. Lens flare is the current cinematic trick du jour, if not obsession of many directors looking to slick up their movies with a high gloss. Lens flare, you may recall, is when light enters the lens, refracts and creates a brief mini super-nova across the film frame. The cinematic equivalent of having a flashlight shone in your eyes, which this film does, on numerous occasions. It's an apt visual metaphor for a movie that proclaims itself to be about diverting the gaze in order to trick the viewer. But here, temporary blindness (like fake lens flare), is a cheap gimmick that is much easier to employ than true slight of hand. There's no real sense of magic in this movie that is about magic. The tricks along with the nature of magic itself are constantly being explained along the way draining the film of magic of any kind. The would be "brainy" complications of the plot are not brainy enough...the complicated bank account trick slogs on for what seems an eternity. Capers need to be plotted with air-tight precision that stand up to repeated viewings. The caper needs to be carried out by characters about whom you care enough to be invested in whether or not they get caught. The filmmakers here make the deadly mistake of thinking the tricks are more interesting than the tricksters. And present a series of tricks that are not really all that compelling. Shallow characters carrying out rather pedestrian tricks adds up to a movie that's rather shallow and pedestrian, no matter how much lens flare you throw at the camera. Which is a shame, because it's a fantastic premise which should have been developed for someone up to the task...a cinematic magician if you will. As for the plot, it gets loopier as it goes along, trying to explain itself because it really has no point. You never really know what anyone's motivation is...who is Morgan Freeman again? Why is Michael Caine in this and why is it okay to rob him? Which would be fine, except the movie is at such pains to keep explaining itself (literally) it starts to feel that the movie is explaining itself to itself. The actors were all wasted, trying desperately to impart some kind of character to their character (Harrelson is most successful, but his efforts are for naught. Eisenberg is completely wasted). There is one thrilling scene when the movie comes to life. A fight in a small apartment between one of the magicians and two FBI agents. The magician uses the magic from up his sleeves to fend off the two men. This scene, which approached a kind of magic, was what "Now You See Me" needed more of. But you'll have to settle for lens flare.