Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me, essentially a heist film with a twist of Vegas-style magic, is itself a cinematographic trick, and all the slick action, quick dialogue, and flashy sequences are almost enough sleight-of-hand to hide the fact that beneath the surface, there’s not much to it.
Leterrier, who directed the Transporter movies and Clash of the Titans, has an undeniable flair for action and pace, and Now You See Me is no exception. The introductory vignettes for the protagonists whirl by at breakneck speed, so quickly, in fact, it’s easy to forget that there’s not really any reason to like or root for any of them. The rest of the film is similarly paced, with an amped-up score and dazzling special effects, but very little in the way of heart or substance.
The cast is strong, with each of the four leads giving enough here to make the end result watchable. Jesse Eisenberg, J. Daniel Atlas, basically reprises his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, except now Zuck can do magic and get women to like him. Isla Fisher is a fairly one-dimensional former assistant to Atlas, and she strides around purposefully an awful lot, but doesn’t do much in the way of advancing the plot. Woody Harrelson is his typical, wisecracking self — if you guessed that he gives someone the finger at some point in this film, give yourself a prize — and is worth a chuckle every few minutes. Dave Franco, little brother to A-lister James, is probably the most engaging out of the Four Horsemen, as the protagonists call themselves.
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, who shared the screen in Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight reboots, are about as listless and uninteresting as anyone can be on screen. Between Now You See Me and the upcoming old-guys-partying Las Vegas, it’s safe to say that, at this point, Freeman has given up on serious acting and is a professional check casher now.
The plot moves along briskly enough — it’s listed at 115 minutes, but doesn’t feel that long. It’s a good thing it moves as quickly as it does, too, because the underlying ‘story,’ if you want to call it that, is pretty questionable. The characters are orchestrating an enormous hoax/caper and their motivations for doing so are vague, at best.
Daniel Atlas at several points says, “Look closer, because the closer you look, the less you’ll see.” It’s ironically a very poignant statement about the movie, itself. Go watch it, enjoy the ride, but don’t look too closely. Beneath the flashy, fun surface, there’s simply not much to see.
