We went to see Now You See Me this afternoon. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco (what is with Franco men starring in movies as magicians this year?!) as magicians who use their act to rob a bank, an insurance man (played by Michael Cain), and a vault, Now You See Me is a move strong on spectacle: the visuals are fabulous -- ranging from the stage performances of the magicians to the intense action sequences in Las Vegas, New York, and New Orleans. Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent star as an FBI agent and an Interpol officer, respectively, who are trying to figure out how to connect the magicians with the robberies -- because that's the problem with a magic act, you see, it's hard to pin down the modus operandi.
The movie's cast is strong: The magicians are believable, particularly Woody Harrelson as a "mentalist" whose "targeted guessing" reminded me of Shawn Spencer from the TV crime dramedy Psych (which happens to be one of my favorite TV shows). Have you ever noticed how when two actors appear in multiple movies
together they play the same roles over and over? Well, these guys
managed to avoid it this time. It was nice to see Eisenberg and Harrelson in a movie together where neither of them fired a shotgun or hunted for Twinkies (Zombieland, for those not in the know, and definitely not one of my favorite movies ever). Mark Ruffalo plays the typical hardworking cop-detective-FBI-agent, and he plays it well, overall.
The movie's strong point, however, is its tightly woven, face-paced plot that keeps you guessing on where the next part in the elaborate magicians' show/plan/heist. Of course, much of this you can glean from the trailer. Contrary to the trailer, however, the movie does not center around the Robin Hood, 99% rhetoric that is so appealing nowadays.
And yet. And yet, at the end of the movie, I left the movie feeling robbed. The dramatic plot twist at the end of the movie felt fake, the semi-romantic relationships fell flat (as a pancake under an anvil), and the writers should, quite honestly, have rethought the ending. For a movie about people who create elaborate plans months and years in advance, the writers didn't plan very well for the ending. Allow me to explain: if your dramatic plot twist relies on a "whodunit"-style setup, you can't change things totally out of the blue. You have to drop clues so that the audience can keep guessing or at the end look back and realize what you could have seen all along, but you got distracted by other plot elements. I believe the magician term is "misdirection." Which the movie talks about and demonstrates quite thoroughly. It's just writers either A) wrote themselves into a corner, or B) didn't plan far enough ahead to drop the appropriate clues, or C) had to rewrite the ending at the last minute for some reason or other. Incidentally, the writers could have taken a page from the writers of Psych, although they actually do go a bit overboard at times with singling out clues along the way.
So that's that: the magicians who stole millions stole the show and the writers failed to deliver a satisfactory ending -- which is quite frustrating because up to that point the numerous plotlines held together quite nicely.
And heart. It was missing heart.
In the end: would I buy it? Nah. I might rent it just so I can see if I missed the clues that make the big reveal make sense. Is it pretty on the big screen? Definitely. Like I said, the movie is all about spectacle.
One last thing: Dave Franco made a better magician than James Franco, IMHO. But that's highly influenced by the writing, too.
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