What a gyp.

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2014)

I went into this movie honestly expecting to enjoy it. It looked like a fun thriller-heist kind of movie, with all kinds of twists and turns. Maybe it wasn't Scarface, but at least fun to watch. But roughly an hour into this movie, I realized we had left the concept of "twists and turns" behind long ago. In its place was a series of slaps to my face, one delivered after another, that I apparently earned for thinking I was beginning to have even an inkling of what was REALLY going on here. Black was suddenly white, then it was black again, and then it went polka-dotted, and up was sideways and then became Tuesday.
This movie thinks it is a hundred times more clever than it is. By giving us absolutely no information until key moments, it makes its own riddles impossible to guess. Then the movie laughs at us for trying to figure it out. The young magicians in this movie -- initially no more talented than knockoffs of David Blaine and Jonathan Edwards -- suddenly become godlike and inscrutable when chased by all the combined efforts of FBI and Interpol, who are made to look about as foolish as us, the audience. And the twist in the final twenty minutes nullifies literally EVERYTHING that came before it.
Throughout the whole mess, I was left grasping for a single character to sympathize with. The "Four Horsemen" were all arrogant, unlikable con men. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman had some truly fantastic scenes together, but their characters were literally a corrupt insurance salesman and the taunting sprite of the screenwriter laughing at us, in that order. Mark Ruffalo was great as usual. I was fully in his corner (spoiler) until the final fifteen minutes absolutely pulled the rug out on any shred of believability for his character. His chemistry with Melanie Laurent was the only thing I could legitimately root for in the film. And of course they're given a rushed, pat "happy ending", presumably for some kind of closure for us, the paying audience. But we've just been punched in the face by the plot of this movie. It wanted to be Ocean's Eleven, and it was barely even Spy Kids. Five out of ten is generous.