'Now You See Me' - Movie Review

The movie starts by introducing several magicians: the illusionist Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), the escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), the mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), and con-man and lock-pick Jack Wilder (Dave Franco). They're brought together by a mysterious summons. The movie then jumps forward a year, showing their spectacular combined stage show, and introducing the team's financier Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), and - after the team appears to rob a bank in Paris via teleportation from Las Vegas, FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent).

Woo - did you get all that? It's a big cast of characters, but the movie handles them astonishingly well.

Despite Thaddeus pointing out - correctly - that the magicians will always be several steps ahead of the investigators, Dylan trails doggedly along behind them being repeatedly humiliated when he doesn't keep up. Alma looks like she might have a clue, but - while never quite so far behind as Dylan - doesn't manage to catch up to them either. The end result is a somewhat goofy and unbelievable heist movie with some rather bad logic, but if you can suspend disbelief for a couple hours it's still a lot of fun.