Now You See Me

[BritishHobo]

Anyone bothered to see this? Pretty entertaining thriller-lite with a very good cast - four stage magicians/illusionists (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco) put on elaborate shows funded by Michael Caine, during which they commit crimes live on stage, which FBI bloke Mark Ruffalo is assigned to solve, enlisting the help of professional magician-debunker Morgan Freeman.

Pretty fun, but the type of film you can only really watch once. Like your standard magic trick.

Empire Magazine criticized it for

Spoiler alert

giving away its secrets, but I think that's a silly complaint. Magic tricks can be done, and right in front of you, which is where the fun of guessing is. For a light film like this to give no answers would be shit, because then the trick could be as convoluted as possible and have no solution at all.

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Spoiler alert

Also unlike most people (or: most IMDb users and Chris Tookey), I liked the explanation. It fit with the constant reinforcement of misdirection and focusing on the smaller details, and doesn't contradict anything in the movie. In fact it helps explain why that character was so wilfully stupid throughout - they were helping to keep the FBI one step behind in order to let the Horsemen succeed.

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One criticism I do agree with is that it squanders its four magicians. It's a great casting, but they don't get many chances to play off of each other.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It's another film desperate to throw a BIG TWIST.

But the BIG TWIST is seriously shit this time, and just like the last film with a BIG TWIST (Side Effects), it involved filmmaking cowardice of an acute level.

It's lazy rug-pulling fucking shit that tramples over all emotional investment you place in the film, and isn't even explained by any breadcrumbs, it's just THIS IS THE SITUATION. HAH. YEAH WE WENT THERE. So fucking what. It's about as impressive as a fart in a windsock.

The rest was good fun, although that Social Network bloke should probably play a part soon where he doesn't play an unjustifiedly smug smart-arsed fucking cunt with the likeability of swastika grafitii on a jew's gravestone.

One footnote- Isla Fisher- was it her? - cannot act. And the lisp bloke was terrible.

[BritishHobo]

Aye, but I thought it fit with the spirit and tone of the film at least. You knew basically from the start that something to that effect would happen - the entire film was about magicians misdirecting people's attention to totally flip their expectations. Better than a straight thriller that twists everything at the last minute.

The one thing that unreasonably fucked me off was that nobody at the FBI would simply ask "Okay, let's pretend for a moment that the trick and the robbery were a total coincidence - how did the trick work?" when the smug magicians smugly smugged that pinning the robbery on them was tantamount to believing in magic.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It was basically Hustle wasn't it.

The twist wasn't in keeping with the theme of magic and nor were the justifications or groundwork thought through. It's a common theme with modern hollywood films- they reach 1 hour 20 of running time then the screenplay auto-defecates into a rushed or spoiled conclusion. Sometimes that's okay, just not when it's dressed up as a clever twist, when in fact the guy who it is is Last Man Standing, and his actions in the film at no point suggest, or hint, or are constructed to give any clue as to his culpability or emotional stake in it. This is technically misdirection, it's just pretty lame if it isn't even as clever as the magic tricks.

Oh and the fight in their hideout was basically the Matrix. There's no way even a skilled fighter could've also used the items in the room to perform impromptu magic tricks or just disappear and appear in another room. Fuck off please.

[BritishHobo]

At least it explains why he stubbornly refuses to learn what everyone keeps telling him to learn (look at the big picture, don't fall for the misdirection), falls for every trick they play, and has to be given a literal example and be taken by hand by the French girl, to finally not walk right into their trick. Until close to the end, I was infuriated by how thick he was.

Maybe I'm just relieved that that was to some degree justified in the end.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

But he's shown getting privately infuriated at his inability to crack the case, and indeed drinking himself into a stupor. This contradicts the BIG TWIST.

[Jake Thingray]

Amazing that Sir Maurice bleedin' Micklewhite is still getting away with it.

[BritishHobo]

But he's shown getting privately infuriated at his inability to crack the case, and indeed drinking himself into a stupor. This contradicts the BIG TWIST.

Fuck, you're right. I genuinely had it down as relatively smart, because playing the inept FBI guy[nb]another example is not immediately pegging that the "Freeze!" trigger-word was blatantly set up for him. Could they have been more obvious?[/nb] is the perfect way to stay close while keeping the FBI just far enough, but I'd forgotten about the solo scenes. Always the way, innit?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Amazing that Sir Maurice bleedin' Micklewhite is still getting away with it.

He phones in an awful performance and his character is dropped and his situation (losing 140m) unresolved.

But look, a smooth talking geek magician who is the smartest guy in the room, but still needs to compensate for massive insecurities by being a smug deeply unlikeable prick.

[Fry]

I just remembered the end of this film, where Morgan Freeman has been framed for the robbery by the magicians. The pay off to this is when the police rush into a car park, they approach his car, the doors pop open and the boot flies up and loads and loads of money comes bursting out. For this ploy to work the police would have had to assume that MFs character rigged his own vehicle to explode with all this cash he had just stolen about 20 minutes ago. Despite the car being in an otherwise empty parking garage so this would be for his own amusement, the police just happened to stumble upon it at the right time.

Apparently this is what they believe because the next scene is Morgan Freeman in what appears to be a dungeon???

Brilliant stuff .

Edit: Found a clip https://youtu.be/yCEvV2CafL0

[Dex Sawash]

I hated this film

[Icehaven]

I also hated it, but still watched the second one, which is even sillier and worse.

[mothman]

Thing that occurred to me, watching these films, is that most people will only ever have seen these big magic tricks performed on TV, where it is implicit that no camera tricks are being used, otherwise what is the point? But now we're watching this film - these two films, to date - in which magic tricks are created using camera tricks - and editing, and CGI etc. And it looks fake, and many of the tricks are impossible. Now, a magic trick being impossible isn't a (heh) showstopper per se, but when we see the impossible done in a TV magic show, we believe it. But we don't here.

And to cap it off, there is the germ of a good idea in the franchise's premise. But it's totally fucked in the execution. Great cast, wasted. The final twist and the reveal of a main character's real identity and motivations and actions are totally belied by everything we saw that character do, even when nobody else was watching.[nb]This is one that always gets me. When things are only bveing done for the benefit of the audience. One example for me is the firstScream film, in which Ghostface is seen skulking around outside Sidney's house. Why?! It's purely for the audience. It makes no sense for the killer to be there at that moment, and certainly not in a disguise that makes him even more noticeable. It's pure audience jump-scare and completely nonsensical with it.[/nb] Same thing in the second film when

Spoiler alert

Freeman's

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true role is revealed, when nothing he said or did in the first film hints at it.

And back to the cast: it even wastes Michael Caine as a baddie, which has mostly been a rarity in his career especially when his later years business model is playing mentor figures in Nolan films. The sudden and brief reveal that he is a traitor in the first Kingsman has more impact than these two films together. And it deals with an unavoidable real-world casting problem - Isla Fisher's pregnancy - in the worst and most hackneyed way possible, by introducing a new character who is identical in role and personality to the old one. If they'd just recast, said that Lizzy Caplan is now playing Fisher's character, nobody would have batted an eyelid if they'd even noticed at all. But no, we have this new person who suddenly is expected to be as famous as the three other remaining Horsemen and - I can't iterate quite how stupid this is - is wanted for the same crimes as them (that they committed in the first film) without having been involved!

What else? Oh, yes. All these rapturous audiences for their performances. Especially the London one in NYSM2. Look, we had a world-famous magician do a trick over the Thames. What did Londoners do? No, they didn't go into paroxysms of fangirling, they luzzed paintbombs at the cunt.

[BritishHobo]

I used to quite fervently defend the final twist of the first film, as you can see above. I'm still convinced in the recesses of my mind that that twist actually holds up - I always meant to rewatch it to confirm my belief that there aren't any solo scenes that contradict things, as I swore there were always people about for whom he had to keep the act up. But then the second film did

Spoiler alert

literally the same twist,

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in a way not even I could pretend stood up to any scrutiny at all. So I thought fuck it, everyone was probably right about film one, can't be arsed to check.

Film two was such an odd decision, given how much shit the first twist got.

Spoiler alert

Doing exactly the same twist but doubling down on it, meaning that the first film now actually has no villain at all. It's just a load of people, all on the same side, essentially putting on a show for no purpose.

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[mothman]

If they ever make a third film, perhaps the end of it will have David Rasche and JK Simmons in an office in CIA headquarters wondering what the point of it all was.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It's the JJ Abrams school of screenwriting. If doesn't matter if the plot doesn't make sense, as long as it seems clever in the immediate moment.

[lazyhour]

Easily one of the worst big-budget films that has ever been made.

[checkoutgirl]

I hated this film

Me too. Beyond shite. And they called the sequel Now You See Me 2 instead of Now You Don't. I'd put in the same shitty tier as the Oceans 11 remake and sequels.

[phantom_power]

What? Ocean's 11 is a great film. 12 is pretty bad but 13 is a bit of a revival. The first one though is pretty much a textbook enjoyable, twisty heist film with charismatic leads, a great soundtrack and a director in full flow

[mothman]

And they called the sequel Now You See Me 2 instead of Now You Don't.

If they ever make the third one, you just now there'll be a teaser poster saying Now You 3 Me. Though I can't decide if it'd be better or worse than Now You See 3.

[timebug]

Liked it when I first saw it.It's only afterwards that all of the points raised in this thread,start to creep into your mind.

[bgmnts]

Is it as good as The Sting?

[mothman]

No.

[BlodwynPig]

That cast list - would be better with relative unknowns.

[Billy]

I think this holds the record for the DVD I've seen the most in charity shops in the last couple of years. People bought it, watched it once and banished it from their homes at the first opportunity.

It's the equivalent of those 'Best Album of the Next Century Ever' CDs that are in fucking hundreds of Oxfams/Scopes/BHFs etc, although at least they have the excuse that they were free with every pack of Golden Grahams in 1999.

[dissolute ocelot]

I think this holds the record for the DVD I've seen the most in charity shops in the last couple of years. People bought it, watched it once and banished it from their homes at the first opportunity.

It seems to be on ITV2 or E4 about twice a week as well, so I think owning it would be about as futile as buying a CD of the Go Compare jingle.