Movie Review: Now You See Me

My intent is to review SciFi and fantasy movies from time to time.  Now You See Me, might stretch this definition.  It was a movie I saw last Thursday (date night with my wife after work).  I can say that from the previews I had a little different expectation for the film than what I saw.  However, I will start off saying that I liked it.

The movie is about four street magicians, or really hustlers, who are recruited by a mysterious person to perform a spectacular magic show.  There are things that cross almost into the scifi realm with 3-d effects in the movie (not 3-d visuals for the audience, but for the characters in the movie).  These stretch the believability slightly for current technology, but add a slight sense of mysticism.

After the brief character introductions and getting them together at one location, the movie cuts to one year later and their first big performance together.  This is where they rob a bank and the FBI and Interpol get involved.  I won’t go into many of the details because I don’t want to give away anything, but the bulk of the movie is about the four magicians avoiding the authorities and how the authorities are trying to capture them as they perform two more big feats.

There are just a few hints of supernatural in the movie, but the tricks are explained through the course of the investigation and the explanations are plausible (with the assumption that everything was working to their advantage).  I was attracted to the hint of potentially supernatural magic in the trailers, which if you are expecting to see that, you may be slightly disappointed.

The other attraction for me was the cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mogran Freeman, and Michael Caine are favorites of mine.  The other actors also did a good job: Mark Ruffalo, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Melanie Laurent.

I will give it 4 out of 5 stars.