NOW YOU SEE ME MOVIE REVIEW

Do you believe in magic? Are you a skeptic? When you see a great illusionist perform their feats of mysticism, do you accept it for what it is, or are you always looking for the trick up their sleeve? Watch closely, but not too closely. For the closer you look, the less you see.

 At its core, Now You See Me is a heist movie; a heist movie with magic. What could possibly go... wrong, right? It all begins with four very talented street magicians, all with their own special talents. They each receive a mysterious message to come to this bombed out apartment building, where they meet each other for the first time. The next thing we see, they are on the big stage in Las Vegas performing as The Four Horsemen. Their big finale is something never before seen in the world of magic. They rob a bank. But did they really, or was it just typical slight of hand?

It's funny that this movie is about illusions, because, to me, it was kind of an illusion of a good movie. It was entertaining and fun, but just too silly to actually be good.

I liked the Four Horsemen themselves. Jesse Eisenberg is J. Daniel Atlas and plays pretty much the same character he played in The Social Network. Woody Harrelson stole the show as Merritt McKinney, the mentalist. Isla Fisher and Dave Franco are....adequate. The four of them together are captivating to watch, and make the first half of the movie really enjoyable, if a bit far fetched. 

 It's in the second half that the movie really falls apart. The FBI involvement was interesting at first because they had the issue of, if they really robbed a bank while they were onstage, it had to be magic. That was an interesting concept. Once it was decided that they really had robbed a bank, then it just became your average heist movie chase with the FBI looking really inept and the agent (Mark Ruffalo) looking like an incompetent fool. Somehow, this group goes from a quartet of cocky magicians to a collection of goofy Batman villains.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Michael Cain was in the movie. He was great as always, just wasn't there enough for my taste. Speaking of great actors, Morgan Freeman played Thaddeus Bradley, who was probably my favorite character in the movie. He was a former magician who now makes a series of videos debunking magicians. The FBI enlists him to help figure out how the Horsemen pulled off these robberies, that may or may not have been robberies in the first place. Freeman was great and I actually liked the character. Along with Harrelson, he was one of the best things in the movie. I would have liked to see them do more with him, but.......

 The ending was really, REALLY stupid. It looks like it's headed toward a certain ending, which would have been bad and predictable, but the actual ending they used was even worse. It had a twist, but it made no sense and just felt really cheap.

Now You See Me is pretty entertaining throughout. The acting is very good. There are funny parts and suspenseful parts. In the end however, it's just too nonsensical to amount to much. The lemon of an ending left me feeling taken advantage of. I won't say this is a bad movie exactly, but it is certainly not a good movie either.  The Movie Man gives it 3 out of 5 stars. 

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