Director: Ruben Fleischer
Writers: Seth Grahame-Smith, Michael Lesslie, Rhett Reese
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco
Synopsis: A diamond heist reunites retired Horsemen illusionists with new performers Greenblatt, Smith and Sessa as they target dangerous criminals.
The tagline for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t feels like an inside joke aimed at the audience. Yes, there’s a third installment of the Lionsgate franchise that no one wanted and no one asked for. The tagline—delivered as Morgan Freeman sits in a chair cashing a paycheck, reads, “The closer you look, the less you see.” It’s oddly fitting because there’s simply nothing here, new or old, that might hold an audience’s interest.
That’s because the film is all spectacle and no magic, an elaborate distraction to hide how little substance the franchise actually has, yet somehow still manages to maintain a stranglehold over.
The story follows three new magicians, thieves, and con artists who set out to disrupt the alchemy that controls the global economy. That includes Charlie (I Saw the TV Glow’s Justice Smith), the brains behind the operation, who works comfortably in the background. Then there’s June (Avengers: Infinity War’s Ariana Greenblatt), one of the best young pickpockets in the world, who’s never found an object she couldn’t steal with her expert sleight of hand.
Finally, there’s the “face” of the group, every team has one, Bosco (The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa), a former Juilliard student who dropped out and now gets his kicks playing a wide variety of characters, making him invaluable in the con-game. Bosco is the charismatic antihero of the group, where being the hero is thrust upon him. At least, that is how he comes across when Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) confronts their team after their latest theft from the corrupt and gives back to the people.
See, the young bucks used a hologram of the Four Horsemen as a beard. Utterly impressed, Atlas now wants to recruit these young illusionists into their world. That would be stealing the world’s largest diamond from Veronika (Golden Globe nominee Rosamund Pike), the leader of a worldwide crime syndicate. (I mean, is there any other kind?) When the operation goes haywire, the rest of the Horsemen reunite, including Merritt (Woody Harrelson), Jack (Dave Franco), and Henley (Jay Kelly’s Isla Fisher), whom they haven’t seen since the Pont des Arts in Paris.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t was directed by Ruben Fleischer, which is almost shocking. The filmmaker—known for his distinct, crowd-pleasing genre films with an edge, including Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less, Venom, and the gut-busting Zombieland: Double Tap—somehow loses the comic bite, irreverent humor, and genre-blending energy that defined his earlier work. Qualities, I think we can all agree, the franchise could have used an injection of.
It probably doesn’t help that the script, watered down by multiple rewrites from the likes of Michael Lesslie, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese, and Seth Grahame-Smith, treats the movie like a superhero film, where anything can happen thanks to the so-called “magic” of illusion. Trust me, if Joe Pesci’s Vincent “Vinny” Gambini were around, he’d be calling out everyone for their transparent escapes.
The main issue with the Now You See Me franchise is that it relies too heavily on CGI and over-the-top spectacle, stripping away the imagination and suspense the film should be building for its audience. At its core, and at its best, it’s essentially a heist movie, a con game that should bring the same joy as classics like The Sting or contemporary crowd pleasers like Catch Me If You Can, The Thomas Crown Affair, or even Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
When real illusion is replaced with comic-book spectacle (there’s even an eye-rolling scene where each magician tries to out-trick the other), the CGI sleight of hand leaves the film with no tension, no awe, and no sense of risk. Not to mention, the real magic of any movie, the plot, is so convoluted that we aren’t even sure how they got there. I would call it fraud. Then there’s the issue of movies like this setting up sequels or resurrecting beloved characters solely to manufacture an emotional moment that’s hardly earned.
This is the equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of the wrong hat. The ridiculous twist at the end doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, especially when it results in the Horsemen losing one of their own because of it. Mistakes like these—despite all the money and time invested—leave a good story vanishing in a puff of smoke the moment Eisenberg appears on screen. For those reasons, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t fails to live up to its potential as good, campy fun.
You can watch Now You See Me: Now You Don’t only in theaters starting November 14th!
