Movie Review: Now You See Me

Now You See Me (2013)

An FBI agent and an Interpol detective track a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money.  Short synopsis of Now You See Me taken from IMDb.com

Now You See Me's content was quite exciting, but the problem was that I kept watching to see what the trick was.  I saw some things coming, but not the actual end.  I actually thought the French Interpol gal might be in on the magic act/big time theft, but no (sorry to blow that surprise).  And I think I see why people like French accents; her accent was quite fetching.  Rowrr!

Overall, the movie was pretty good; better even than I expected.  But the end was a bit... disappointing.  The end of The Prestige was so good, but Now You See Me seemed to fall off in the final act.  Can't say exactly why.  It was a fun movie.  Worth the cheap seats price.  Woody Harrelson was the best part.  His humor was incorrigible.  And the big name cast was there, giving their input.  Though I think Morgan Freeman phoned it in a bit.  Maybe it was that "ending-not-liking-so-much" feeling I had that colored that opinion.  Michael Caine was good, and I didn't see what happened to him in the movie's conclusion until it did.  A nice touch, that.

The water chamber trick is certainly not new, though it appears everybody has to throw their own gimmick on it. Here is Harry Houdini performing the so-called "Chinese Water Torture Cell" trick in 1912.  According to Wikipedia, he altered a previous trick, called "Milk Can Escape," in which he was sealed in an over-sized milk container filled with water, into this trick. / Source: Wikipedia.org

The intended distractions in the film's plot didn't faze me overall, as the movie seems to challenge its viewer to keep an eye out for things.  For instance, the car chase scene.  You lose sight of three of the four principal magicians during it, so I was sure they were up to something and the fourth magician would make it out safely.  And - spoiler alert - he did.

OK, not much more to say.  Now You See Me was popcorn entertainment, but certainly not worth seeing twice for me.  But definitely worth the cheap seats admission (especially using my school discount!).

The parting comment:

Speaking of films with magic in them...  I thought there was some interesting material in this clip.  Yes, the link between this video and the actual review above is tenuous.  But I couldn't find anything I liked to put for my parting comment here.   So there you go.