Now You See Me (2013) could well have been a superhero movie, especially an Avengers or X-Men. It stars a bunch of characters with myriad extraordinary abilities, each with their specialties. Their magic tricks are played out for us, without satisfying logic, almost like we are supposed to accept them the way we accept superheroes. They are a vigilante team who are a part of something larger than themselves to even out injustice in the world. On its basic level, though, it is a heist movie.
It doesn’t have the nerd value of the Marvel DC superhero movies nor does it have the elegance and style of one of the Oceans’ franchise. And even if one doesn’t want to think of The Prestige , one of the finest movies ever made on magic, Michael Caine’s presence can’t help but remind us of it. It is, therefore best to see Now You See Me 1 and 2 as cheesy mash-ups of the ideas and themes of abovementioned films. Part 2 is not much better or worse from part 1.
The best bits come in the first half hour. One of the four horsemen is gone – a shady con-job by the makers who couldn’t get Isla Fisher to reprise her role of Henley Reeves. Fisher probably presumed that the film will not have a sequel and must have given her dates to other projects. Lulu (Lizzy Caplan), meant to look more sexually attractive, joins the horsemen as her replacement.
They have been in hiding since the last film. And before long, we see them announce their grand comeback show, meant to take place at a high-profile tech launch event. Their target is exposing a Mark Zuckerberg-style young, popular entrepreneur who seems to have access to people’s information without their permission. How they break into the systems and onto the stage is completely unbelievable but it makes for an impossibly smooth watch. There is a hoot-worthy scene here that involves the FBI and who else, but Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo).
But these are pretty much the only good things about the film. One would expect the fireworks to arrive after the introduction of the antagonist. The opposite happens in Now You See Me 2 . In a movie about cool magic tricks, Daniel Radcliffe stars as a shockingly dumb and one-note villain who is given less meat than Abhishek Bachchan in the Dhoom movies. From its second act, the film degrades into generic, dull mess involving unintelligible micro-chips, vague, done-to-death conspiracies about hacking and information.– Sankhayan Ghosh
Now You See Me 2
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Lizzy Caplan, Morgan Freeman, Daniel Radcliffe, Michael Caine
Director: Jon M Chu
