Fun magical heist movie

Rating: 7/10 (31 May 2013)

This is a bit of Ocean's 11 meets The Prestige and I'm sure some people will find it derivative, but the mash up of magic and heist movie worked for me. This was tremendous fun from the beginning more or less until the end (more on that later). We meet our four magical heroes in montage fashion that recalls Ocean's 11: each is shown working their own routines and then receiving a tarot card telling them to meet at a specific place and time. A year or so later, they have a magical act together in Las Vegas under the name The Four Horsemen, where they tell the crowd that they will rob a bank live on stage. They then – supposedly – teleport a French banker to his Parisian bank to steal thousands in Euros and leave a calling card, the money is then rained down upon the crowd. Later shows in New Orleans and New York follow the same format. In New Orleans, we see that their act is a kind of Robin Hood gesture, as money is stolen from an insurance magnate and redistributed to foreclosure victims.
Morgan Freeman stars as a former magician who now makes a living debunking magic acts and trying to figure out the gang's method; and Mark Ruffalo is the federal agent attempting the catch the Four Horseman committing a robbery. The main cast – Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco – are wonderfully charming. There are a few one liners that fall with a thud, and a couple plot points that might have been better developed, but the movie is a breezy ride most of the way through. Dave Franco, as always, should get more screen time.
The central mystery to this plot is who is pulling the strings; who summoned the Four Horsemen to their meeting and organized each of the heists? The answer, when we receive it, is a bit unfair and leaves many open questions. The more you examine the questions, the less they make sense; though repeat viewings may disprove me. This isn't a Sixth Sense kind of ending where you should have seen it coming all along; it's more of a Murder of Roger Ackroyd solution where the perp wasn't even really a suspect.
I think that many people will feel cheated by the ending. Still, this movie was an hour and 50 minutes and I thought some more development and additional scenes could have been included. When I want a movie to stretch longer, it's definitely working for me.