The opening scene of Louis Leterrier's latest film, NOW YOU SEE ME, is strikingly similar to the beginning of Christopher Nolan's brilliant 2006 film, THE PRESTIGE. Just like Christian Bale and Michael Caine in Nolan's magical, mystery thriller, Jesse Eisenberg asks you watch closely. The difference however is what follows. Bale and Caine in THE PRESTIGE explain that you don't see what's really happening because you don't really want to know; you want to be fooled. What's so great about this line is that it captures not only the spirit of Nolan's film, but the spirit of magic itself. You crave that wonderment. You think you want to know the trick, but in reality you're happier being fooled and holding on to the unknown. On the other hand, Eisenberg and NOW YOU SEE ME explain simply that the closer you look, the less you'll really see. Unlike with THE PRESTIGE, there is no real mystery there. In fact, there's little substance at all. And, like the beginning quote, the closer you look at NOW YOU SEE ME, the clearer it becomes that the reason you'll see less is because there's actually nothing there.
Okay, saying there's nothing there is a bit extreme. What's there is a lot of "could have been." The premise of the film is actually pretty cool. Four magicians - Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Jack Wilder (David Franco), and Merritt Osbourne (Woody Harrelson) - are brought together by a mysterious benefactor and one year later they're performing a show in Las Vegas entitled "The Four Horsemen" sponsored by insurance magnate Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine, yes he's in this one too). During one of their performances the team invite an audience member on stage to perform their final trick: robbing a bank. After it appears that the audience member is actually transported to his bank in Paris and that the money has indeed been stolen, the team are put on a crash course with FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and INTERPOL agent Alma Vargas (Melanie Laurent) as well as ex-magician Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) who are all looking to uncover the group's secrets as their tricks get increasingly daring and more and more life-threatening.
See! That sounds pretty intriguing, right? Obviously there's a very interesting parallel between magic and a film like NOW YOU SEE ME. Both magic shows and caper films require their ticketholders to engage in a certain suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy the wonder unfolding before them without ruining things by asking too many questions. However, when a film like NOW YOU SEE ME gives you so little to work with, it's impossible not to ask too many questions. This questioning doesn't ruin the film. The film does a good enough job of that on it's own - a basic idea that is highly compelling destroyed by so many twists and unexplained plot lines. Why is Melanie Laurent chosen to be INTERPOL's eyes even though she has never worked in the field before this? Why is it that these are the four magicians chosen by this mysterious benefactor? And on that note, who are these people really?
Basically what I'm getting at is that NOW YOU SEE ME doesn't make any damn sense. It constantly opens up questions (even going so far as to have characters blatantly ask them) only to never actually answer them. The actors do a fine job (except Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine who couldn't be phoning in their performances any harder unless they actually did their lines over the phone and were CGI-ed in later), but their characters are so one-dimensional and lifeless that you never really connect with or feel anything for them. And the magic itself is amazingly even duller. A mix of terrible CGI and the atrocious choice by Leterrier to shoot everything in boring, monotonous steadicam shots don't grab onto that child-like sense of amazement. Instead they ignite the scoffing, cynical adult in you that makes you wonder how anyone ever thought this was a good idea.
THE PRESTIGE was a film that never made you feel stupid. It showed you everything that was there and if you could figure out what was going on then that was good on you. And if not, when the final scenes pulled back the curtain completely you were left wide-eyed and wanting nothing more than to immediately see the entire thing again. NOW YOU SEE ME, on the other hand, thinks you're an idiot. In fact, it basically says so throughout the entire movie. Seemingly every line out of the magicians' mouths is some variation of, "Wow, are you really that stupid? How dumb can you be? You're fifty steps behind and somehow getting colder. How do you even remember how to breathe?" Not only is this poor writing, it's insulting. We're not fifty steps behind because we're dumb or because your movie is so clever. We're fifty steps behind because the story your creating couldn't make less sense.
NOW YOU SEE ME tries to be what THE PRESTIGE was, even what OCEAN'S ELEVEN was. From the beginning those films have you wrapped around their finger and the endings become reminiscent of that feeling that magic shows used to give you when you were smaller (and, in my case, even now) - that feeling of being completely awe-struck, unable to believe how fully they had enraptured you. The twist ending of NOW YOU SEE ME is equally unbelievable. Unfortunately, that unbelievability doesn't come from magical story-telling or cinematic sleight-of-hand. It comes from the fact that the final reveal completely undermines EVERY SINGLE THING WE'VE SEEN UP TO THAT POINT. It's doesn't make any sense logistically and it doesn't make any sense in the context of the story. The only thing that doesn't feel out of place about it is Morgan Freeman's character yelling out, "Why?! WHY?!!"
I don't know, Morgan. Maybe we were just watching too closely.
3 out of 10
