Now You See Me
Louis Leterrier
The story: Four street magicians are brought together by a mysterious figure, and for their first show as The Four Horsemen in Las Vegas, they rob a bank while on stage. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) appear to be executing some larger game plan even as FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol agent Alma Vargas (Melanie Laurent) chase after them. Rounding out the star-studded cast are Michael Caine as Arthur Tressler, an insurance magnate who bankrolls the Four Horsemen’s shows, and Morgan Freeman as Thaddeus Bradley, a former magician who makes money by revealing the secrets of others in the trade.

This caper movie pulls off the neat little trick of assembling a top-drawer cast and then delivering a fun flick with plenty of nifty sleight-of-hand setpieces. Director Louis Leterrier (Clash Of The Titans, 2010) works with a light touch here and keeps things moving along.
The Four Horsemen are quickly sketched out in compact little scenes at the start of the movie and the casting helps to establish their personalities.
Eisenberg’s (The Social Network, 2010) Daniel is a cocky whiz-kid who is something of a control freak. Fisher (Confessions Of A Shopaholic, 2009) is his lovely former assistant who is perhaps there to prevent the enterprise from being too testosterone- driven. Harrelson’s (Zombieland, 2009) Merritt is a rascally hypnotist with a flirty leer. And Dave Franco, younger brother of the more famous James, is the charming Jack who has a knack for picking locks.
The repartee is quick and quippy, and it would have been nice to have more of that interplay among the four.
And the magic shows that follow, in Las Vegas, New Orleans and finally, New York, are staged with oomph and pizzazz and are engaging in their own right. All the while, you wonder how the stakes will be raised from show to show and what the end goal is. Are the Horsemen in on what is happening or are they willing pawns in some scheme that is bigger and beyond them?
As the FBI agent hot on their trail, Dylan (Ruffalo from 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers) is led around in circles and is always two steps behind. Likewise,
Leterrier carefully plants scenes as well.
A story about a former magician whose final trick went fatally wrong and a playful scene of Eisenberg trying, and failing, to read magnate Tressler’s mind, pay off in spades later.
Some of the mumbo-jumbo about the power of The Eye of magic feels hokey and the romance
between Ruffalo and Laurent is a little awkward but they are minor quibbles.
When Leterrier eventually whips away the curtain, the big reveal is a surprising and satisfying one.
Sure, he used smokescreens and mirrors but one does not mind being hoodwinked when the result is a snappy piece of entertainment.
(ST)