Now You See Me

Directed by Louis Leterrier, Now You See Me details the chaos that ensues after four magicians (Jesse Eisenberg’s Daniel Atlas, Woody Harrelson’s Merritt McKinney, Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves, and Dave Franco’s Jack Wilder) successfully manage to rob a bank during their larger-than-life Vegas show – with the film subsequently following the foursome as they attempt to both top themselves and avoid the advances of two dogged cops (Mark Ruffalo’s Dylan Rhodes and Melanie Laurent’s Alma Dray). The rather irresistible premise is, at the outset, employed to compulsively watchable effect by Leterrier, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, and Edward Ricourt, has infused Now You See Me with a slick and impressively fast-paced feel that proves impossible to resist. The glossy atmosphere does, however, begin to wear out its welcome as the movie unfolds, with the pervasive lack of substance compounded by an almost total lack of character development or narrative momentum (ie the script is, for the most part, primarily concerned with moving from one over-the-top set piece to the next). And while some of this stuff is kind of intriguing – the aforementioned bank robbery remains an obvious highlight – the film is simply unable to hold the viewer’s interest in the stretches between the central foursome’s illicit exploits. (Leterrier’s frenetic, swooping camerawork exacerbates the film’s progressively uninvolving feel.) By the time the admittedly unexpected third-act twist rolls around, Now You See Me has definitively established itself as a missed opportunity that never lives up to its strong opening – with the curious lack of actual, palpable magic certainly ranking high on the movie’s list of missteps.

** out of ****