Absolutely terrible movie!

Rating: 1/10 (20 April 2014)

I saw this movie not knowing what to expect, only knowing that it involved some sort of heist and magic. I thought maybe a mixture of The Prestige and Oceans 11. At any rate, I thought the movie looked like it could be interesting and fun.
It was NOT.
I'm not sure where to begin with this. The start of the movie seemed promising, if not a little cliché. We saw the four "Horsemen" characters doing their various magic tricks, or cons, in some cases, and being followed by a shadowy figure. They were each left with a card inviting them to show up at some place to be invited into some sort of special club. At this point, the movie didn't really show any signs of being too bad. From there on out, it was down hill. They show up at some apartment and we get some brief histories of the various characters. Not enough to know why they do what they do (I assumed this would come later, but nope - we learn next to nothing about them. We never learn what their motivation for doing anything is.). To sum up the characters: Wood Harrelson's character: Annoying washed up magician reduced to conning people in airports using "mentalist" magic and hypnosis. Jesse Eisenberg's character: Basically Zuckerberg in "The Social Network", but also does magic. Isla Fisher: Used to be Eisenberg's assistant. The other guy: Can pick locks and steals wallets.
So after that one minute introduction to the characters, the audience has found some connection with them, some way to empathize or at least root for them. Oh wait no we haven't. We just see four jerks enter an apartment, trigger some blurry hologram or something, that can't really be made out, and they're all saying "Wow! This is awesome!", I'm sitting in my seat thinking "What? What are you looking at? What is so interesting?".
Next shot the four horsemen have a TV show and it's one year later and their on stage in front of thousands and explain how they are going to rob a bank. Some French guy gets duped into thinking he robbed the bank, for some reason.
Mark Ruffalo enters the movie at this point and starts chasing the four horsemen down. Morgan Freeman is also up to something. Michael Caine gets duped by the Four Horsemen because he's rich. They con him out of lots of money. But it makes absolutely no sense. They steal his money and deposit it in his "victims" accounts, illegally. They do realize that the money will be put back into Caine's account the next day right? At this point I lost all hope that this film had any redeemable qualities. There's another robbery. Mark Ruffalo falls in love with a French woman for some reason. For some reason the Four Horsemen fill Morgan Freeman's car with money, and he notices just as the police arrive. We are perhaps supposed to believe he will go to jail for this, but if he as a lawyer with a functioning brain, it wouldn't even go to trial. The Four Horsemen as much as admit live on TV their crimes, so it's pretty obvious Freeman is being framed. And if he wasn't, why would he put all the money in his car in such an absurd way? Nothing makes sense!
The creme de la creme of drivel happens when the fourth Horseman gets killed in a car chase. His car flips over on a busy highway and explodes into flames, just as Ruffalo can reach in through the window and grab a McGuffin. I'm not sure if we were supposed to feel sad, or anything at the death of the guy who basically has done nothing for most of the movie. He threw some cards like shurikens and picked a lock - that's it. However, I remember thinking, "I did see HIS car flip over and explode, so this movie will have a lot of explaining to do if he isn't dead." But at that point I was so disengaged from the movie, and cared so little about any of the characters, that I could barely muster an eyebrow raise after the movie revealed that, yes, the fourth horsemen was alive. But how? As I said, I saw HIS car explode. Nope, the movie claims I saw another car explode. A car that was attached to the front of a bus on a busy highway, driven by Woody Harrelson. So the movie claimed I was a liar and that I saw some other car explode. So, are these Four horsemen omnipotent? How could they possibly guarantee that the chain of events would transpire exactly in that way, so that the dummy car flips over in just the right place at just the right time on just the right road and everyone (including TV helicopters) don't notice the big switcheroo? Are we really this stupid? Do the audience really deserve this? So after the shock of being called a liar by the movie, I then had to witness perhaps the worst "big reveal" in cinematic history. A reveal that made so little sense and threw out the entire story up to that point. It makes the entire movie pointless.
So the movie ends when the four horseman come together and put the cards that they were given one year ago (and they haven't even dog-eared the corners in all that time) together and some laser magic happens or some crap, and Mark Ruffalo appears and says well done, you can join my club, or whatever. Nobody cares at this point. They all get on a merry-go- round (I'm not joking) and the movie ends. My only advise is, if you are taking a film making course, you might as well watch this to see how not to make a movie. Otherwise keep clear of this toxic waste.