Hat Trick

Movies: Now You See Me

(Ye be warned: thar be mild spoilers in this review)

Now You See Me, aka "that magician movie starring the guy who played Mark Zuckerberg", is a pretty bad film. But its fatal flaw is simple: it does not know what kind of movie it wants to be.

The film starts off intriguing and entertaining: four talented magicians, each with a special skill, are brought together by a mysterious fifth party. One year later, they perform a trick where they rob a bank in Paris while standing on stage in Las Vegas. As money swirls around the huge venue, and a credit union in France realizes they've been robbed of 3 million dollars, the FBI gets involved.

But as the movie continues, with Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent as a pair of FBI agents tracking down the "Four Horsemen" (Jesse Eisenberg as an arrogant, young magician; Woody Harrelson as a hypnotist; Isla Fisher as a sexy escape artist; and Dave Franco as a punky pickpocket), Now You See Me gets unbearably complicated and silly.

What starts out as a heist movie takes a turn for what appears to be a film with a social justice message. The second time the Four Horsemen do their now world famous trick, they quite literally rob a rich man and give to the poor audience--an audience pre-selected to attend the show because they all lost houses, possessions, and loved ones during Hurricane Katrina.

But the social justice aspect isn't there for long, and the movie takes a sharp into "revenge film" territory: where a man who sets out to debunk the Four Horsemen is framed for a crime he didn't commit. All because he has some vague ties to another magician who might or might not have died under mysterious circumstances years before.

Does this sound as crazy as fuck to you? Well, I'm right there with you. It's not too long into the movie before you realize that the filmmakers of Now You See Me didn't have a clear vision of the kind of movie they wanted to make. So they ended up throwing everything they could against a wall to see what would stick. And what we're left with is a very messy wall.

Disappointingly, Now You See Me had a lot of promise: an initially entertaining premise, a star-studded cast, some decent laughs, etc. But as the twists and turns keep coming, the audience (well, me anyway) got more and more unamused and bored. The film ends on a final twist that is more laughable and stupid than shocking. After watching the movie, you realize it's not so much a complicated, cerebral film as it is lazy and loosey-goosey.

I spent 2 bucks to see Now You See Me, and I consider it money well spent if only for Mark Ruffalo's embarrassingly ridiculous performance as a frustrated FBI agent. But I can't recommend this movie, which tries so hard to fool the audience only to end up fooling itself.

2.5 out of 5 stars