"Now You See Me" Review

Now You See Me's trailer (see below) sort of promises Ocean's 11 with magicians and the movie starts with a rapid-fire series of scenes introducing us to Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and James Franco's Jim Belushi of a brother Dave as they do their respective acts, some bordering on criminal. They are summoned to an apartment with a mysterious puzzle inside and then the story jumps ahead a year where they're The Four Horsemen and are doing a Vegas show where their big finish is to appear to teleport an audience member to a French bank upon which the contents of a vault are showered upon the crowd.

This naturally attracts the attention of the FBI led by Mark Ruffalo, a pretty Interpol agent (Mélanie Laurent) and a James Randi-style debunker (Morgan Freeman) who is wondering what this gang is up to. They have a Very Wealthy Benefactor (Michael Caine) who appears to be bankrolling their activities, but there appears to be a twist in their relationship which then sets up a weird class warfare/Robin Hood caper which sails past the bounds of reasonable disbelief suspension.

While Now You See Me starts off slick and flashy - I was wondering how many SteadiCam operators director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, the pretty good Ed Norton one; the first two good Transporter movies) burned through with all his sweeping shots - it starts to bog down halfway through as we cope with unnecessary romance and the increasingly ridiculous and convoluted plot which ends up in downtown WTFville. The overstocked cast deserves better, like a coherent, non-gimmicky script; that'd be a nice trick.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.