When
I reviewed The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, I remarked upon my
passion and fascination for the secret world of real magicians, the
closest thing we have to modern day superheroes (not counting actual superheroes). Its why I love The Prestige so much, watching two
titans in the craft of mystery and trickery wielding powers that are
seemingly supernatural but amassed purely through talent and
discipline, in a world just this side of normal. Now You See Me is a
movie about real world magic that falls somewhere in between the
admittedly very wide chasm between those two other movies I just mentioned, and while it has its obvious flaws, it is nonetheless
unabashedly entertaining pretty much from beginning to end.
The
story follows a quartet of expert street magicians recruited by a
mysterious fifth to construct and pull off an elaborate multi-step
scheme involving heists, Robin Hood style thievery, and straight up
revenge within the context of a stage magic tour. When the team's
very public and very large scale exploits run afoul of the feds, we
see through law enforcement's eyes as the larger plan unfolds,
involving corporate malfeasance, professional debunkers, secret
societies, and a dark and tragic history coming back to haunt certain
interested parties. Nothing is as it seems, at least for a while,
until we eventually see just how clever everyone is, bouncing from
one “How'd they do that” trick/reveal cycle to the next until the
final act.
It's
going to sound like I'm bashing this movie a lot, because the things
I had a problem with take a lot of explaining, but I assure you, I
did enjoy this film quite a bit. As a big budget summer popcorn
movie, its up there with the best of the year so far, and not being
directly adapted from anything I love, it lacked any of the fan boy
betraying elements of the last two big ones Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness. That being said, it does have its problems. The first
of these is that ultimately, it is overly complicated in its setting.
The futuristic elements like holograms and high tech wizardry only
serve as a hindrance when you realize that everything the characters
are doing can be done without any of it. Apart from the scale and
unrealistically insane level of preparation needed to pull off this
plan, this could have been an otherwise real world story, which would
have lent a little more legitimacy to the action.
And
high tech gadgets aren't the only unnecessary thing cluttering this
movie that simply didn't have to be there. About half way through,
the concept of secret societies is introduced, promising the
possibility of real magic which thankfully never comes to spoil the
fun. This Illuminati of Magic element is not only completely
pointless and corny, but makes the film's plot more convoluted than
it needs to be or should be. At times the movie feels like it doesn't
know whether it wants to be an Inside Man style revenge plot or a
weird semi-sequel to National Treasure for the stage magic set. That
it juggles both in such a way as to still result in a mostly cohesive
and fun experience is an accomplishment, but one that didn't have to
be made if the filmmakers hadn't treated simplicity like a four
letter word.
The
four main characters are instantly likable in that somewhat forced
Sherlock Holmes Mary Sue kinda way, where we respond to their being,
as they put it, “the smartest guys in the room,” and its to the
film's credit that this never really gets annoying. I'm on record
expressing my general distaste for Jesse Eisenberg, but here I think
his typical doucheness kind of works for the type of character he's
playing. At the same time, Dave Franco plays against type as the good
hearted neophyte of the group, which also strangely works. Woody Harrelson is always good, and no less here as the wily mentalist, and
the only one I would say is entirely miscast is Isla Fisher, who I
usually like, but I don't think has the femme fatale chops this kind
of role demands of her.
Also,
I'm not sure who the protagonists and the antagonists are supposed to
be in this movie. We start off with the magicians, then shift to Mark Ruffalo's FBI agent chasing them, and the movie continuously springs
from one to the other's perspective as if I'm supposed to root for
both of them in their mutually exclusive goals. Then you throw in
Morgan Freeman's enigmatic ex-magician, who seems to be against both
of them, but also a good guy, or maybe not. This ordinarily wouldn't
be a problem except that by the end, it seems like we are meant to
make a clear demarcation between who deserves to win and who deserves
to lose this increasingly complicated game, and with the exception of
the unrepentantly vile casino magnate played by Michael Caine, I'm
not sure why the movie thinks I should be happy about the outcomes
for any of the characters.
In
my review for Star Trek Into Darkness, I noted that I was surprised
by the reveal of the villain's true identity only because I did not
expect the writers to do something so predictable and frankly silly.
This is now the second movie in 2013 produced by Alex Kurtzman and Robert
Orci where I can say this, and it pissed me off just as much here.
There is a point where you might begin to suspect a certain character
as the secret benefactor of the main magic crew if only because they are the person you might least suspect, and if you're like
me, you might reject this suspicion, because surely such an otherwise
well thought out movie wouldn't do something so stupid. And then they
do. I can't explain how this hampers the movie in retrospect without
spoiling it, but suffice to say, its bad enough that it almost ruins
the entire movie for me.
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