Guilty Pleasures #1 Now you see me

I love this movie! There’s a first for this blog. Now You See Me is magic on the big screen, and its magic that doesn't make you fall asleep (unlike those crappy magicians on <insert country here>’s Got Talent. But being on the big screen does kind of hamper its believability and this movie's plot is so full of holes it’s almost Swiss cheese. I like Swiss cheese (I think) and I like this movie, but let’s tear it apart anyway. I want you to watch this movie, so I’ll try and be light on the spoilers, but since I’m reviewing it mostly from a plot standpoint, full spoilers ahead.

So we start with a brief intro to each of our protagonists (or possibly antagonists, not sure). J Daniel Atlas performs a card trick, which actually works if you’re watching it naïve to the result. J Daniel Atlas is played by Jesse Eisenburg, who’s going to be playing Lex Luthor in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (best of luck to him) we then see hypnotist Merritt McKinney (and you know I had to look that name up), played by Woody Harrelson, perform a hypnosis trick to con a man out of money (and remember, he’s one of our protagonists) then we see Jack Wilder, played by Dave Franco using a magic trick fake-out to steal a man’s wallet and watch (again, our heroes?) finally we see Henley Reeves, played by Isla Fisher making a daring escape from some CGI piranhas. (She did actually made the escape though)

 

She actually did do the trick, all be it minus the piranhas, and most likely without the actual trick

Each trick is observed by a mysterious figure, who leaves each of them a card. Cut to New York where our crew finally meet up. Turns out Henley used to be J Daniel’s assistant, until he became too big a jerk for her to handle. Much to the amusement of Merritt. Jack arrives last and picks the lock to the door they were asked to meet at. After performing, what I assume is CGI magic, they see a clearly CGI holo-screen (I can believe this in super-hero movies, but in this it comes off as gimmicky) which gives them a set of gibberish instructions. And cue the titles

1 year later, turns out these 4 made an act and thanks to the money-backing of Arthur Tressler (played by Michael Caine) they perform a routine in Vegas. After a way too short amount of time, they announce their final act: they’re going to rob a bank. They randomly select a member of the audience who’s bank is the Credit Republic in Paris. Through some more CGI they unveil a ‘teleportation’ helmet which allows the unwitting assailant to transport into the bank and suck up all the cash which is then distributed to the audience.

 

Now please, Mr Frenchmen step into this device, and let me assure you, it is nothing like a guillotine

We meet our… antagonist? He’s called in after the robbery, when the Four Horsemen are arrested. Dylan Rhodes (played by Mark Ruffalo, who you might remember playing Bruce Banner in the Avengers film) is soon joined by Interpol agent Alma Drey (played by Mélanie Laurant) they interrogate the horsemen but can’t get any reasonable answers from them. Not wanting to go down in history as the guys who admit in magic, they let the 4 leave

 

This interrogation is going well. Mm Diet Pepsi

This where I start shaking my head. None of them deny having robbed the bank, in fact they all but admit it, and by the lines of the movie 'admit they're going to do it again'. Letting them out is the stupidest option they could have. Especially when the next scene comes by. Turns out a magic debunker, Thaddeus Bradley, played by Morgan Freeman.

Caught the whole performance and knows how it was done. I’ll leave out how our unwitting victim was chosen, and how he came into the bank but I’ll instead mention that the Horseman targeted an armoured truck in Paris from the inside to get the money, and replaced it with fake flash paper

Problems a plenty here:
1) how the hell did no-one spot them?

2) How the HELL DID NO-ONE SPOT THEM?
3) HOW THE F*CKING HELL DID NO-ONE SPOT THEM

4) How come no-one at A BANK didn't notice their money was entirely flash paper

5) How come the flash paper went off at that convenient time, Was there some sort of trigger? Who triggered it? How?

So they have a vault set, that looks exactly like the one in the Credit Republic, which they haven't seen, of course...

Cut to a plane heading to New Orleans, where J Daniel tries to read Arthur Tressler's mind, and fails. In New Orleans Dylan and Alma manage to get an apartment in a crowded city and they discuss a magician named Lionel Shrike. And how he managed to supposedly transport a card into a tree. She mentions that they never found a body when he died and that therefore he could be the mastermind behind the four-horseman. Meanwhile Tressler meets with Thaddeus Bradley and offers him a cheque to not expose the horsemen. Thaddeus refuses the offer, and warns Tressler that bad things may soon come for him.

 

Pity to see Lucius Fox and Alfred have had difficulties after Bruce faked his death... whoops wrong series, and probably a trademarked joke too, sorry CinemaSins

The second performance seems to have many tricks to it, including, but not limited to a rabbit in the box trick, which they later debunk saying there’s a mirror in the box (yes, this will become a plot-point later) for their final trick Merritt successfully (rather worryingly) predicts the amount of money in everyone’s bank accounts, including Arthur Tressler's, then says they’re all wrong. A flash of the torch reveals that money is being transferred out of Arthur’s bank account and into the audiences, leaving him for broke. They reveal they had not chosen the audience by accident (I call bullsh*t on this, and I’ll explain later) that they were all victims of hurricane Katrina (or another similar disaster, it was not explicitly stated) that were abandoned by Tressler's insurance firm.  They reveal they got access to his bank with information he’d provided on the plane

So let’s go over the problems with this

1) No way Tressler would keep a sum of money of over $140 million in 1 bank account

2) No way Tressler would keep a sum of money of over $140 without investing it

3) Is this just a UK thing, but don’t you need like an online pin or something, seems like anybody could just steal money

4) How were they doing it, whilst they were still on stage, none of them were holding a phone?

5) No way Tressler would've just given them information they could use to access his bank account when the first trick they did was bank robbery

6) According to a news clip I didn't bother mentioning, tickets for the night sold out in 42 seconds. NO WAY COULD EVERY SINGLE TICKET HAVE BEEN BOUGHT BY KATRINA VICTIMS, hell, the audience wasn’t chosen at all.

7) God the audience are thick, until one guy actually started to check his phone, they were ready to believe a PIECE OF PAPER

8) That must be the worst security account access ever, when people finally start checking their phones, it takes them two seconds before they start cheering.

The Horsemen run with Dylan and Alma in pursuit. J Daniel tricks Dylan by attaching one of the tracking ankle-bracelets he’d be using during the performance to Dylan, making Dylan track himself into a dead-end. This scene is positively hilarious. After that debacle Dylan wonders how they’d kept one step ahead, until he realises his ‘phone’ had been bugged, or more specifically replaced with a bugged decoy phone during the interrogation (conveniently caught on tape, making you wonder why they didn't catch this earlier) problem is. How? J Daniel Atlas just met the guy, he didn't know what type of phone he had to make a decoy. Wanting to use this advantage, he tracks the horsemen to New York.

Tressler and Bradley meet up where Tressler offers money from his… I don’t know, his other assets to do exactly what Bradley was going to do anyway, expose them. Cut to New York and one of my favourite scenes from the movie. Aware that the FBI are onto them, the horsemen leave Jack to burn all the evidence. Leaving him to fend for himself against the FBI. Using a combination of magic, CGI and just being awesome he manages to evade them and get into a car, he eventually crashes and the car explodes, with Dylan able to recover enough documents to pinpoint the Horsemen’s next target: a company that was under investigation by the FBI for not paying their tax, and conveniently (I mean really conveniently) stuffing it in a safe. (Then again, security of banks in this is so bad, it’d almost be safer in a safe) apparently the head FBI agent had ordered the case moved under hypnosis (having no memory of having done so).

 

I love this scene, I have nothing funny to say about it, enjoy the awesome of the shot that doesn't reflect the action

They intercept the safe on board a truck, but decide to wait it out and catch the Horsemen in the act (they've admitted the bank robberies, it’s not like you need more evidence!) They instead discover Thaddeus Bradley who reveals the Horsemen had tricked them, and that the safe was a decoy containing balloon animals. In the final trick at 5-points Queens, the 3 horsemen perform their final show. They make some bland generic statements about not using magic for evil (which is essentially what they've been doing the entire movie) whilst the FBI pursue them. After a sort of teleportation trick? They decide to run off the edge of the building and turn into fake money (worst finale ever!)

 

RB 1845? Zrok? B+Bs? What kind of graffiti is this?

At a car park, Thaddeus Bradley opens his car and discovers the stolen money spilling out of it, he’s quickly arrested for it. (Oh come on! The Horsemen have all but admitted all the robberies, and there’s no way any sane or rational man would put their money in their car in such a way that it would spill out when it’s opened.) In the prison cell Bradley contemplates how the tricks were done. He believes the room which contained the safe was transformed with a mirror like the magic box (clever idea, except for one thing, figure somebody might’ve noticed their reflection, or just the fact the ceiling would shrink or floor grow) and hid the safe behind it. Jack Wilder, who had, thanks to a decoy car, survived the car crash explosion was the one responsible for the robbery. But Dylan still believes there’s a 5^th player, and questions why the horsemen never kept any of them money. Bradley also admits his confusion, but suddenly comes to a realisation

 

Nice cosy cell, of course if the FBI have any sense, Bradley won't be in it for much longer, what am I saying, he's doomed

Yup, that’s right, Dylan was the 5^th horseman the entire time. Let’s ignore the fact that he was only on this case by chance, and say he planned that J Daniel knew which phone he’d have a year later without making contact, and that he deliberately made himself look like a depressed bumbling idiot… Actually that makes a damn lot of sense, his motivations behind doing so are a little more confusing, I’ll get to those later.

We have a brief scene in Central park where Dylan reveals himself to the Horsemen (all 4 of them)

Cut to Paris, I assume a few days later, where Dylan reveals to Alma his motivations. Apparantly Lionel Shrike was his father. He had died in a comeback performance, which was necessary because Thaddeus Bradley had exposed his secrets, attempting to perform an escape trick from a safe made by the company that used one to hide their unpaid taxes, which was made of cheap steel and got damaged in the trick so he couldn’t escape. Tressler insurance and the Credit Republic of Paris didn’t pay out on Tressler’s death (he must have had some pretty good life insurance for them to even think of it being paid out) because they never found his body. Rather than doing the sensible thing, and turning him in for $143 million robbery and the attempted robbery of however much was in that safe, she decides to lock the secret away and never speak of it again, because they’re in a contrived romance.

 

Our 'hero' ladies and gentlemen, he steals $143 million, and locks the secret away never to be spoken of again

So that’s my summary of the plot points, there are few I’ve missed some I’ll touch upon a few here. The theme for this is that misdirection is the key to magic. They show is, they say it, they slam it into your head crowbar at times. Yeah, that isn't particularly subtle. And it was a genuine surprise to me that Dylan was the 5^th horseman. There may be reasons for that, maybe the fact that he was such a bumbling idiot, that he had seemed to have no care whatsoever for magic, that he was so frustrating with a failure he took to drink, and that he was the one who consistently asked people. In short he was a very good actor. (So Mark Ruffalo is playing an actor playing a character as a disguise.) I suppose the misdirection here was that a lot of the story, which in their sections focused on the dynamic (which was never really a relationship) between Dylan and Alma, spent a not inconsiderable amount of time putting question marks over Alma, particularly noting her inexperience and the likely fact that she requested to be put on the case.

Honestly she didn't come off that inexperienced, which I put down mostly to the script, and to be honest, I never really bought that she was the 5^th horseman, especially I doubt we’d ever see her watching something in the shadows. So while everyone knew there was another party involved, there were never any major hints as to who it was, and while there are things which are explained by the reveal, the motivation part is rushed to the point where you may need to watch several times before you understand it.

 

He's defending himself with playing cards. Questions invalid, enjoy the awesome

All the actors play their parts well, including the few I haven’t mentioned, the music is nice, the major gripe comes down to the magic itself. To even watch this movie, you have to be accepting of the fact that these tricks are supposed to be real, even if it’s blatantly obvious that they aren't (that CGI sheet thing bouncing around the stage, no.) Yes I’m probably nit-picking here, but does demonstrate a major problem with magic based movies, suspension of disbelief is harder to attain here. They want you to think the magic is real in age where everyone knows the capabilities of editing and CGI.

Does this give me rage issues, no, I love this movie; I can’t get mad at it

But it’s still dumb. It wants you to think the magic is real, despite obvious evidence to the contrary and the set up for some tricks is ridiculous at best. This is one of those films where it's best not to over-analyse it (like I just did) just take everything as it comes and enjoy that epic chase scene at the beginning of the third act.

Rage Rating: -70%

Now you see me was created by Summit Entertainment, and they hold Copyright. Use of Images in this review are subject to fair use.

Next: Guilty pleasures #2 will be The Dark Knight Rises

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