Movie review: NOW YOU SEE ME 1
Story:
Four illusionists 'Horsemen' with different skills, are enticed into working for a hidden trickster. They devise elaborate crimes while being pursued by an angry cop, and if they can pull them off they will get rewarded beyond their imagining. How do they do it? Do they actually have 'magic'?🤔 Who’s pulling the strings and why?
Review:
The movie opens by introducing the four leads: a cocky street magician (Jesse Eisenberg); his former assistant (Isla Fisher), whose solo act focuses on gory stunts; a once famous mentalist (Woody Harrelson) who's been reduced to using cold reading and hypnosis to shake down people for cash; and a sleight-of-hand artist (Dave Franco, brother of James) who moonlights as a pickpocket. A hoodie-wearing stranger slips each of them a Tarot card inscribed with a date and a New York address.
Flash forward to Las Vegas a year later, where the four now perform as a headlining act called the Four Horsemen. For their big finale, they present a complicated illusion where a random audience member appears to be teleported into the vault of his bank. The audience member is told to turn on the vault's ventilation system, which sucks up a palette of Euros; a few seconds later, the bills rain down over the audience. The crowd goes wild.
The next day, the magicians are brought in for questioning by the FBI; it seems the audience member's bank has been robbed, and a prop used in the magic act has been found at the scene. Soon, the magicians are being investigated by a surly agent (Mark Ruffalo) and an Interpol detective (Mélanie Laurent); they know the Four Horsemen are involved in the crime, but can't figure out how.
Also on the Four Horsemen's trail is a smug ex-magician (Morgan Freeman) who has made a fortune revealing the secrets behind well-known illusions. Freeman can make the clunkiest exposition sound good for the most part, that's what he's here to do. Turning Freeman into the movie's de facto on-camera narrator is "Now You See Me"'s neatest trick, especially since much of the movie's third act revolves around tweaking his all-knowing screen persona.
There is, of course, an explanation for the heist, and it isn't "magic" but said explanation doesn't so much strain credibility as negate it. "Now You See Me" is proudly outlandish; the Four Horsemen's methods which involve giant mirrors, doubles, hypnosis, copious amounts of flash paper, and, uh, holograms are as logic-defying as their tricks. Had the movie ended by simply revealing that the four were wizards, it would be more believable.
That, however, wouldn't be as fun. Much of what makes "Now You See Me" so entertaining in a gaudy, disposable, Vegas act sort of way, is its ever-escalating ridiculousness. After the bank job, the Four Horsemen go on a series of ever-more-complicated heists, which turn them into fugitives and folk heroes. The movie, which began as "just" a bank-robbing magician story, eventually becomes a narrative Rube Goldberg contraption; conspiracies, secret identities, decades-old vendettas, and occult brotherhoods are involved.
This movie is amazing. A cat and mouse game with the Feds and Oceans 11 with chase scenes and all. If you like magic and heist films, chances are you'll really like this film. I really thought it was going to end for a minute without really tying up many loose ends but the ending cleaned everything up perfectly. Very enjoyable.