Now You See Me

The leg­endary escapol­o­gist Har­ry Hou­di­ni once said: ​“no per­former should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth.” Speak­ing of which, here comes chintzy heist caper Now You See Me, the lat­est opus from Clash of the Titans auteur Louis Leter­ri­er. Den­tal­ly speak­ing, it’s not quite the Hol­ly­wood equiv­a­lent of root canal, though the wonky screen­play would cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit from a few strate­gic fillings.

Could it be mag­ic? Well, maybe, pro­vid­ing your idea of hocus pocus is a hyper­ac­tive, sci­ence fic­tion ver­sion of Ocean’s Eleven with sur­plus Burt Won­der­stone kitsch. What’s more, this sleek, well-groomed thriller feels only mar­gin­al­ly less camp than a night on the tiles with Siegfried and Roy.

The film’s lean con­cept (magi­cians do heists) is killer, though Leter­ri­er and his Mag­ic Cir­cle of screen­writ­ers sac­ri­fice any real mys­tery for cheap thrills and propul­sive spec­ta­cle. It’s an enig­ma trapped inside a two-hour car chase.

In prin­ci­ple, at least, it’s a banker. A mot­ley band of four loose­ly-con­nect­ed magi­cians are assem­bled by a mys­te­ri­ous bene­fac­tor in order to pull off the great­est trick the world has ever seen. Fast for­ward one year, and the so-called ​“Four Horse­men” (Jesse Eisen­berg, Woody Har­rel­son, Isla Fish­er and Dave Fran­co) take to the stage in Las Vegas, invit­ing a ran­dom­ly select­ed mem­ber of the audi­ence to help them bring down a Paris bank.

Is it mag­ic? Is it theft? And what are they plan­ning next? FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruf­fa­lo, chan­nelling some of his ram­shackle Zodi­ac charm) recruits pro­fes­sion­al debunker Thad­deus Brown (Mor­gan Free­man) to investigate.

The star­ry cast play to their strengths. Jesse Eisen­berg here gives the usu­al Jesse Eisen­berg per­for­mance except with added shini­ness and an A‑grade hair­cut. The upgrade is sig­nif­i­cant. Rather than play to type as the social­ly awk­ward nerd who strug­gles to make human con­nec­tions, he’s now a social­ly awk­ward nerd who gets laid on a reg­u­lar basis. He’s like Dynamo if Dynamo played World Of War­craft and spent his week­ends doing code. The Las Vegas sheen suits him.

As a grifter with a gift for men­tal­ism, Woody Har­rel­son secretes an oily charm. He’s pret­ty much a stal­wart these days, a pleas­ing­ly errat­ic, twitchy pres­ence in an oth­er­wise straight-laced world. And as token woman-with-a-skill, the like­able Isla Fish­er gets some actu­al stuff to do, albeit in the con­text of a failed rela­tion­ship with the scoundrel Eisenberg.

Still, Fisher’s char­ac­ter does have a few tricks up her span­g­ly sleeve. In one par­tic­u­lar­ly deranged sequence, she blows bub­bles on stage only to mag­i­cal­ly appear float­ing inside said bub­bles on the oth­er side of the the­atre. As illu­sions go, it’s impos­si­ble pif­fle, but the whole thing is so well exe­cut­ed you almost want to applaud. The rest of the film fol­lows suit. Leter­ri­er may well come on like some kind of low-rent Luc Besson, but he sure knows how to saw the screen in half.

Impres­sive­ly, Now You See Me man­ages to hold out an awful long time before reveal­ing its secrets. What a shame, then, that the final flour­ish nev­er quite match­es all the pre­ced­ing effort. It’ll def­i­nite­ly pull the wool over your eyes, though you may want to gouge them out by the time the cred­its roll.