Film: Now You See Me

Director: Louis Leterrier
Genre: Heist Thriller
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinema
Grade: D+

Maybe not all the time, but a lot of the time, the thing about a good heist film is that you feel like you're watching a magic trick. As the pieces of a plan come together--typically a plan that we in the audience only think we know--we see something bigger happening. We've been misdirected by the details, and the real "trick" is something much larger, cleverer, or just different than we originally thought. Inside Man, The Usual Suspects, Oceans Eleven--they dupe us into thinking we know what's going on, and the pleasure comes when we realize we don't.

Now You See Me fails at this. The heist and the tricks are not nearly as clever as the film seems to think they are, and though we see the plan happen, we don't get the pleasure of seeing the pieces come together, because we're never given enough information to be clear what's happening or why we should care. The payoff at the end is ultimately pointless--or at least we don't get to see what makes it matter. And though there are lots of actors I enjoy here (though Isla Fisher is kind of terrible), we don't get to see them really come together as a team--even though the whole point seems to be that they come together as a team. We see them meet and not like each other, and then see them some time later operating as a team, but we don't get the fun of building rapport and rivalry and tension and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't help that the "banter" they share (if it can be called that) takes place mostly on stage and either by design or due to terrible script-writing feels absolutely hollow, insincere, and scripted. This isn't Oceans Eleven by a long stretch.

The film also fails as a magic movie. Though there are a few slight of hand tricks that are fun to watch (the best still being Jesse Eisenberg's handcuff switcharoo from the trailer), most of the tricks feel empty because they are. They are digital effects, and even when they look ok, they are obviously not real. Compared to one of my favorite magic movies, The Prestige, the filmmakers here avoid any indication that magic is a skill or in any way hard. Even when that infinitely better Nolan film gets into the absurd and impossible, it's done such a fine job creating a world in which stage magic and illusion is a product of dedication and work that you buy the short step into the fantastic. Here it's all fantastic, but none of it feels real or earned.

I won't say I didn't enjoy some aspects of this movie, but I wouldn't recommend it. And I won't see it again.

Alternate Film Title: "Now You CGI Me"