Magic!
Most folks are amazed by it when performed by a skilled practitioner. Others are dedicated to the task of seeing through even the most difficult tricks. So, where does Now You See Me: Now You Don’t fall within this spectrum? Well, the answer is a little bit of both. Director Ruben Fleischer brings a third film into a series that began 13 years ago with Now You See Me and continued with the sequel Now You See Me 2 10 years ago. So it’s been a minute.
The current film picks up 10 years later with the original Four Horsemen and introduces three young newcomers. Jesse Eisenberg returns as J. Daniel Atlas, along with Woody Harrelson as Merrit McKinney, Isla Fisher as Henley Reeves, and Dave Franco as Jack Wilder. These “retired” magicians have gone their separate ways and haven’t seen one another for a decade. They are reunited when each receives a Tarot card with a secret message from the Grandmaster of the EYE, the secret society the Four Horsemen work under.
When the band gets back together, they discover the new generation of illusionists who admire the legendary 4 but are skeptical that they’re really all that good. The new guys, all rejects or orphans, or runaways from their previous lives, have formed a family that use magic to steal money from their audiences. They don’t take huge amounts, just enough to fund their enterprise. After all, grand illusions are expensive!
The younger generation of illusionists includes Charlie (Justice Smith), Bosco (Dominic Sessa), and June (Arianna Greenblatt). Just like the Horsemen, they are a self-assured, arrogant bunch. They are both in awe of the legendary Horsemen and competitive with them. They, too, have received Tarot cards. The cards lead them to the EYE headquarters, an enormous chateau in France, where they must decipher numerous codes and hidden messages to learn their assigned task.
Their job involves going head-to-head with the villain of this narrative, Veronica Vanderberg, chillingly portrayed by Rosamund Pike. She’s ruthless- beautiful, but lethal. The minute she says “I have nothing to hide”, you know immediately that she has everything to hide. She is actually the head of a South African crime family established by her late Nazi-in-hiding father, and there’s nothing above board about her immense fortune. She is planning to auction off the largest diamond in the world, worth more than a billion dollars.
The Four Horsemen, along with their new members, are assigned to steal the heavily guarded stone and return it to its rightful owners. They approach their assignment with the usual arrogance and overconfidence, but little do they know the very real danger they’ll face. That’s where I leave you to discover all the twists and turns of the rest of the narrative. Before the screening began, the actor Jesse Eisenberg appeared in a message requesting that none of the “magic” be revealed, and I will do just that.
The film is visually striking with filming locations in Antwerp, Belgium, Abu Dhabi, and Budapest, Hungary. Besides the magic illusions, the action stunts are quite impressive. The preview audience loved the film. You really don’t want to overthink the illusions because, of course, there’s really no way they could be done. Even when they reveal how some of it was set up, the details of where and how they procured the materials and such are vague. If you dwell on what’s not explained, you might forget to just enjoy it.
Sure, the story has plot holes and requires you to ignore the unrealistic feats, but that’s the appeal of magic. Magic is designed to amaze and entertain, and for you to feel a bit of it in your own life. By being in the audience of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, you are participating in the greatest illusion of them all: filmmaking. With all the effects used in any production, and with talented actors pretending to be people they’re not, you receive the gift of escaping from reality for a while and being entertained by watching things that are only possible in your imagination.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t will show you a good time. It’s an audience pleaser. – JoAnne Hyde
GRADE: B