Friday, August 23, 2013

Review - Now You See Me (2013)


Starring Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman and Jesse Eisenberg.
Directed by Louis Leterrier.

Synopsis: FBI agents track a super team of illusionists who call themselves 'The Four Horsemen'. The Four Horsemen pull off a series of heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money.

Now You See Me features a star-studded lineup; Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher and Woody Harrelson play our group of magicians -- while Mark Ruffalo, Melanie Laurent and Morgan Freeman seek to catch them. At the beginning of the film, they are brought together by mystery man whose identity was unknown and one year later they begin to perform crazy but rewarding magic shows. I thought the opening was a good way to bring our magicians together and get the audience pumped for what was ahead. It did and we are rewarded with entertaining stunts which follow. However, the movie does not go in depth on The Four Horsemen; we do not know a lot about these four characters. Now You See Me is pretty much numerous heists and a wild goose chase - but it was a whole lot of fun nonetheless.


As I mentioned before, the movie does not go in depth on the characters but they were still very fun. As the movie goes on, FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) becomes more of the central character as he leads the chase on the four horsemen. The magic tricks are delightful, clever and will have audiences glued to the screen. What is a magician movie without a few plot twists; these are also handled well. Some are a bit predictable but the end twist is what took me by surprise. There and then we are able to connect the mystery man at the beginning of the movie to the events that took place throughout. Now You See Me has a much deeper story than just magicians and tricks and it did an okay job explaining itself. The only downfall of this movie was the romance between Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent which felt forced, out of place and not the strongest way to end the movie. Also, there is the explanation of 'The Eye' which is completely left out of the narrative. This would have provided us with more backstory on the Four Horsemen but I think this was deliberately left out to leave the movie wide open for a sequel -- and there will be a sequel.

Now You See Me is overall fun, clever and entertaining . The cast is awesome and it does remind me a lot of the movie Lucky Number Slevin.

Rating: 7.5/10

4 comments:

  1. I thought this was entertaining, though the more you think about it, the more the magic begins to wear thin, until eventually it disappears from the mind altogether. Still though, a decent way to kill a couple of hours. Not really sure we need a sequel, though. :P

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    1. lol it is entertaining. I think a sequel is necessary just to explain and see what became of this 'Eye'.

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  2. It was definitely entertaining because I didn't always know what was going to happen next. However, I feel like I got boned-over at the end with the stupid, and incomprehensible twist at the end. Good review Shawna.

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    1. Thanks Dan. The twist made sense to me, it probably wasn't executed well enough for most people.

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