Now You See Me (2013) - Review

I have always loved movies about  magic. Black magic, kids' magic, fake magic, Practically Magic...okay, maybe not that last one so much. Regardless, I've always been fascinated by stage magic, and who doesn't love a good heist movie? It was these two things that together made me decide to give Now You See Me a go one sunny afternoon recently.

 

If you've seen the trailer for the film, then you know the plot - four street magicians, all with varying degrees of talent, are brought together by an unknown guide, who shows them plans for a series of master illusions, all designed to bilk someone or some institution out of several hundreds of millions of dollars. The heists themselves are fantastic, and keep you wondering about how they are done - until, of course, we meet the wonderful Morgan Freeman, a former magician who delights in debunking and showing the techniques of magicians and illusionists. After the first grand illusion the "Four Horseman" pull off once assembled together (transporting a man to his bank in France, and stealing millions of Euros), Freeman's character steps right in to explain it.

And this is the film for the entire 1 hour and 55 minutes. The characters pull of an amazing heist, piss off someone or some people, and Morgan Freeman comes around to explain how it was done. I suppose breaking it down to that level of basicness makes it sound dull, but it's not. Of course the FBI and Interpol are interested in how these "tricks" are being done and all this money really is being stolen during the "illusions," and Mark Ruffalo plays a great disheveled federal agent on the hunt for the group, which makes for some fun cat-and-mouse escapes and chases, including a fairly fun car chase ending in a Bay-like explosion.

 

The only part of the movie that really got to me is the CGI used in a lot of the illusions. I understand that they are supposed to be an assembly of the greatest illusionists of all time, but there are a couple of really blatantly-bad effects that really take you out of the movie for a minute. I was more impressed by some of the stupid tricks done in the magic-based comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone from earlier in the year. Either way, though - the team up of the Horseman plus the wonderful casting of Ruffalo, Michael Kelly, and Common as feds makes the action there from beginning to end.
 

A movie like this wouldn't be complete without a love story in the mix, but as opposed to teaming up Eisenberg and Isla Fisher (which is hinted at only slightly as a past partnership gone bad), they went with Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent, who plays Ruffalo's Interpol partner - forced upon him at first, but obviously the grow on each other like any other buddy-cop type in cinema history.

 

All in all, this was a great fun flick, with stylistic visuals that mostly worked, a great, fun story, and likeable characters (I mean it's got Woody Harrelson as a mentalist - how much better can that get?). If you liked Clooney's Ocean films, then you'll heartily enjoy Now You See Me.

 

* * * 1/2  out of  5