At first I thought that Now You See Me was setting up some new movie mega-franchise like The Avengers, only with a team of stage magicians instead superheroes.
Four solo acts — including two accomplished illusionists, a down-on-his-luck mentalist, and a street-level con man — are summoned via tarot cards from a mysterious figure in a hoodie. Each of them seems to understand and to be honored by the significance of the invitation, which leads to an empty apartment in New York where instructions have been left for them.
Suddenly the movie jumps forward one year to find the quartet of Danny (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt (Woody Harrelson), Henley (Isla Fisher), and Jack (Dave Franco) have put together a big-time Las Vegas show, calling themselves the Four Horsemen. They’re being bankrolled by a rich guy named Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), for reasons that are never clear. In the audience is a man who makes his living by exposing the secrets behind magicians’ tricks, Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman). He’s watching carefully as the Four Horsemen seemingly pull off the astonishing feat of robbing a bank in Paris while standing on their stage in Nevada.
This naturally attracts the attention of law enforcement. Grumpy FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and playful French Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) are assigned to the case. The magicians are hauled in for questioning during a dizzying interrogation scene in which director Louis Leterrier insists on spinning his camera over and over around the room. But since charging the Horsemen with the theft would require the government to admit that it believes in magic, they’re released.
Bradley comes along and details exactly how the robbery was pulled off. One element of his explanation doesn’t actually fit logically with the timeline, but whatever. The film moves on to the Four Horsemen’s second big show in New Orleans, where it becomes clearer that revenge might be among the group’s motives. Meanwhile Dray speculates that their actions are part of an initiation ritual required to join an ancient secret society known as the Eye, the keepers of “real magic.” This does seem an odd bit of knowledge for an Interpol agent to have.
The magic depicted in the film isn’t particularly magical. The characters are so weakly drawn that Harrelson fills the vacuum as the same charming rapscallion he’s been in other (better) movies and Eisenberg is largely reprising his role of Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network, though at least the two of them are given more to do than Franco or Fisher.
And you might not guess the final twist, but that’ll only be because you’ll not want to face the possibility that the story would choose to resort to such a stupid cheat.
