Jesse Eisenberg and Rosamund Pike star in convoluted heist film
Now You See Me Now You Don’t
★★★
M. 113 minutes. In theaters
Serpentine drawing is an important part of the job. Now You See Me franchise but this time the writers really raised the bar. I was relieved to learn that the film’s star, Jesse Eisenberg, admitted that even he had trouble understanding one of this film’s crazy complexities.
Justice Smith, Ariana Greenblatt, Dominic Sessa, Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.Credit: Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate via AP
Being meaningful has never been a priority here. It’s all about smoke, mirrors and filling the screen with incessant spectacle that’s exaggerated to the point of distraction.
10 years have passed since the last film of the series, but the formula has not changed. After a long hiatus, the Horsemen, a popular team of stage illusionists, make a comeback, touring the world with their shows as they use their magic to catch international criminals. The bigger the crime and the richer the perpetrator, the more they enjoy it. The only difference this time is the size of the cast. The original team is joined by three teenagers recruited by the Eye, the mysterious agency that assigns the Horsemen’s cases. He also organized the band’s reunion. When the action begins, Eisenberg’s Daniel Atlas is still grumbling over past disagreements over the others deciding to call it quits when he wanted to move on.
This time, their eyes are Rosamund Pike, who expertly produces an Afrikaans accent as Veronika Vanderberg, the domineering matriarch of a family of corrupt diamond miners. The Vanderbergs use the jewels to launder the proceeds of their dirty dealings with drug traffickers and gun smugglers, and the Horsemen attempt to redistribute some of their fortune by stealing their legendary jewel, the Heart Diamond.
Once again, panache and traveling the world are key elements. We begin in New York, where Atlas meets the newbies: Charlie (Justice Smith), June (Ariana Greenblatt), and Bosco (Dominic Sessa), who is almost as arrogant and selfish as Atlas himself. And they’re soon joined by Henley (Isla Fisher), Jack (Dave Franco) and Woody Harrelson, who’s responsible for the light relief as the still-debonair hypnotist Merritt McKinney.
Next stop is a chateau in the French countryside, where Morgan Freeman makes a brief appearance as Thaddeus, who has contacts from the Eye. Then it’s on to Dubai and there’s a big showdown as Veronika and her team prepare to show off the company’s new race car. Naturally, one of the Horsemen manages to take him on a dizzying chase through the city streets.
It takes a very light touch to pull off this kind of thing, and director Ruben Fleischer failed to pull it off. So are their authors. A vital clue lies in the fact that it took a gang of them to bring the script to its final form, and the dialogue still lacks the necessary spark. There’s some predictable banter around the rivalry between the team’s two generations, but this is such a large cast that no one gets a chance to shine.
