Directed by:
Louis LeterrierCinematography:
Larry FongComposer:
Brian TylerCast:
Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Mélanie Laurent, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Michael Kelly, Common (more)VOD (5)
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NOW YOU SEE ME pits an elite FBI squad in a game of cat and mouse against "The Four Horsemen," a super-team of the world's greatest illusionists. "The Four Horsemen" pull off a series of daring heists against corrupt business leaders during their performances, showering the stolen profits on their audiences while staying one step ahead of the law. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (12)
A heist movie from which someone stole the logic. The quintet (!) of screenwriters tried to outsmart viewers, but the gentlemen wound up outsmarting themselves. The necessary extent of viewers’ incredulity that better films about scams consciously work with has been exceeded many times over in Now You See Me. Not even the illusionists can be believed, as they act in conflict with the initial presentation of their characters after a jump in time (we don’t learn much more about them during the rest of the film), nor can their tricks, because they are mostly conjured up with CGI, which breaks the bond between their feats and reality. The magic shows are basically just an excuse for drawn-out and poorly edited action scenes. The weak final justification for the meaning of each of the performances is just another of the countless attempts at misdirection, specifically the effort to evoke the impression that each of the shows was something more than an autonomous attraction. Perhaps this is part of a well-thought-out whole governed by rules that don’t change on the fly and whose individual parts are not connected using a confounding number of coincidences and assumptions that a particular person will only react to a particular situation in one particular way and not another. The final twist robs the film of any remaining shreds of logical coherence. No, I didn’t seriously expect such an ending, because it lacked any logic in relation to the preceding 100 minutes. Instead of the feeling that I had been cleverly outsmarted (the wow effect), there was bitter laughter at someone’s ability to sacrifice all of the story’s believability and meaningfulness to the God of Surprise (the WTF effect). Every narrative device serves to deceive viewers to such an extent that we are constantly aware of the film’s falsity, so its conjuring tricks just don’t work. The Prestige was based on a quite similar principle (we will reveal the rules of the game to you and then we will outfox you anyway), but in that film, the trick was underpinned by the preceding two hours of action. In Nolan’s film, the twist wasn’t conjured up out of screenwriting cluelessness just before the end only so that film could somehow be concluded. In Now You See Me, it is – starting with the way it’s stated in the film’s title – too obvious that we are the intended marks. Something like that might work in Copperfield’s live show, but in a live-action feature film, it ultimately causes the film to retroactively lose meaning because it comes off as just an illusion. The actors also do a utilitarian job. Most of them were cast solely to raise the film’s level of prestige and to serve the same decorative and distracting purpose that one of the characters attributes to a magician’s attractive assistant. Louis Leterrier himself is just such an assistant, but he’s an assistant without a magician. He diligently diverts our attention so that in the end he can artlessly concede in the end that the main content of his performance was the actual act of distracting us. Appendix: The most ridiculous thing is the attempt to shoehorn criticism of unjust social conditions (an apparent echo of Occupy Wall Street) into Now You See Me, a film that defends scam artists and punishes those who bring attention to the scam. 40%
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"The Con Artists" had the potential to become a truly fantastic film. When it came to the actual magic tricks, it was something that I wanted to see from magicians and, of course, something more. However, as the ending approached and the explanations began, the viewer started to feel that something was rotten beneath the surface. With the conclusion, it all came to light like a startled fish. The film, which had been pretending to be a clever film about magicians, eventually turned into a brutally butchered trick with an ending that simply had to disappoint. There is nothing clever about it anymore; it's all very cheap and simple. It's a shame, a terrible shame, because the journey towards it was good. Sometimes the journey is not enough; sometimes the goal is truly essential. It was here. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2013/07/podfukari-2013-55.html
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A very complicated, but at the same time quite imaginative story. And the actors are the icing on the cake. They exuded that kind of a magician’s arrogance and cunning with which their idea grew and fell. But I must say that it wasn’t because of all this that I gave this movie four stars. If that was all the movie had, I would have settled on two. I was totally confused by the story. I, however, enjoyed the way this film was made. The director clearly put a lot of effort into this, to show this project was a dream come true for him. But the best and most beautiful thing about this movie was Mélanie Laurent. I could watch her all day. And if the magicians had chosen her for the disappearing act, I would’ve written an indignant letter all the way to Hollywood, demanding an explanation. Fortunately, she showed all of her French elegance and grace to my complete satisfaction. It’s evident that the director, who is also French, is aware of Melánie’s charm. So even though the movie has its flaws, it also deserves praise. As a result, I was satisfied and now I’m looking forward to a sequel.
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Overwrought and contrived crap - sometimes I'm amazed at how screenwriters are able to ruin their own promising idea. The final half hour of Now You See Me in particular was downright miserable and I probably won't watch it again. The film is, for me, another piece in the puzzle of "Anything with Michael Caine in it". The other actors (including Morgan Freeman) are barely worth mentioning. Two stars and a bit for the (brisk, but totally unnecessary) action scene.
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Though Now You See Me tries to give the impression of being a clever and sophisticated crime-thriller with illusionists, it is actually a rather dull and half-baked tale full of holes, narrative nonsense and moronic twists dressed up in a superficially attractive and maximally spectacular coat in the form of action-oriented editing, flashy visuals, a lot of famous actors and thumping music, which is apparently meant to lull viewers to sleep so that they don’t start thinking about the plot. Of course, it would perhaps be possible to make an entertaining and high-quality film about how four extravagant showmen commit entirely absurd robberies and disguise them as magic shows. But then it wouldn’t have been possible for the plot of Now You See Me to include a completely serious storyline involving a Secret Service who is trying to investigate their case in a factual way and the character of the expert on magic who tries to somehow logically explain the bizarre illusions to him, but ends up explaining them in a way that would be completely impracticable in real life. The atmosphere of the magic performances is thus completely ruined by the film, because while you can certainly admire the magicians for their nimble hands and the precision of their staging, both of these elements were unfortunately replaced with megalomaniacal computer tricks and editing. Which definitely produces the desired “wow” effect for a brief moment, but it takes a lot away from the believability of the overall magical stylization.
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