‘Now You See Me’ tells the story of four magicians (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco), each with a different expertise in the wide field of magic, who are invited to the same room via some mystic tarot cards. The film then flashes forward a year where they are selling out shows around the world as ‘The Four Horsemen’, funded by the mysterious Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine). After they seemingly rob a French bank as part of a Las Vegas show, they are investigated by FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol operative (Mélanie Laurent) who are aided by Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), a magic debunker.
‘Now You See Me’ plays out as part-conspiracy movie, part-thriller, as the FBI try and keep up with the group of magicians to find out how they are doing the tricks. Feeling at times like a movie version of a ‘Jonathan Creek’ episode, with Freeman’s character playing the Creek role and revealing how tricks are done, much of the film’s early enjoyment comes from finding out how the tricks are undertaken.
But one of the further strengths of the film is in its use of character and plot. The four main magicians also work well as an ensemble and the plot uses these characters and seemingly incidental conversations to weave a complicated, but straight forward to follow, plot where everything that is mentioned is mentioned for a reason, and it all comes together as a satisfying whole at the end, though with one final plot twist demanding a re-viewing of the film to see if the final revelation stacks up, as the revelation does come a little out of left field. At least, though, the ending does fill in most of the gaps and leaves few questions.
‘Now You See Me’ is a thoroughly enjoyable film. Though some of the plot points where the magic is concerned will be familiar to anyone who has seen magic being debunked before, much of it is done very cleverly, and only a few obvious CGI scenes – particularly in the Las Vegas performance area with the crowd and the use of drapes – impact on the realism of the piece. You find yourself caring a lot about the central eight characters who all get their own chance to shine, and never does the film seem to falter or feel like it’s filling time.
I don’t think ‘Now You See Me’ has had the publicity it deserves which is a shame, as it’s one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen this year, thanks to its enjoyable magic tricks set up in the opening few minutes and then the grandiose ones through the film; to the set-ups of trickery and lacking of clarity over which characters can be trusted; to moments of great humour. The film finds time to throw in some thriller / cop film tropes in some chase sequences, but these compliment the plot rather than distract from it, and the film remains constantly visually interesting with a range of well shot locations.
8/10
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