Now You See Me - Film Review

Image from IMDB.com

     First things first, if you like magic you will probably like this film. If you don't, you know that whenever the words Michael Caine and Bank Robbery are in the same film blurb, whenever Mark Ruffalo is looking grumpy and unshaven, whenever Morgan Freeman is, er, there, you know you'll like what happens next. But the like-love line rests on the reason why you like magic.
     If you like it for the spectacle, the visual factor, the lights and the colours, you will love this film. Stunning cinematography and elegant graphics bring us from the spotless shine of a Las Vegas stage to the packed streets of New Orleans and the grimiest parts of New York, as a troupe of four magicians play out their unstoppable three-act bank-robbing cop-befuddling show.
     If you like it for the performance, the audience banter, the misdirection, you will probably love this film. With a solid cast and a story full of enough twists and turns to keep any rally-driver off-guard, we're kept involved even when the script falls flat with over-explanation of what we're already seeing. This much pandering down to the audience seems out of place in a film which will attract a crowd which is constantly trying to figure out what's going on.
     So finally, if you like magic for the potential to discover the truth- for the transition from unbelievable phenomenon to easily-explained trickery, you won't love this film. Because this film is a film, not a magic show. There is no sleight-of-hand here, only clever editing. There is no smoke, there are no mirrors; or at least, there need not be, since every scene is so saturated with CGI any amateur's attempt to understand how the trick is done is rendered utterly pointless.
     I'll admit any scientist has to ball up their disbelief and suspend it far, far overhead when watching science fiction, but asking a magic-loving audience to ignore the need for this chase, this search for understanding, is a little disheartening. Though lead investigator Dylan Rhodes (Ruffalo) does bumble his way past a number of tricks of misdirection, the movie-going audience deserve a cryptic clue or two. Agatha Christie received widespread criticism for using an unreliable narrator in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and something similar could be said of the over-use of movie tricks to make the magic we see on-screen more impressive.
     For example, the very first trick we see is of the Pick-A-Card-Any-Card sort, and lo and behold, for the majority of the audience their card* is then lit up on the side of a building. Even here, a trick which by the rest of the film's standards could be considered dull, the magic word is 'Post-Production'.
     But if we do as the scientists do and winch our disbelief into the rafters and ignore the literature student within who just wants to analyse everything, this is a good film. The problem is that it could have been so much better. Granted, with that cast and that subject poor old director Louis Leterrier had a big task ahead of him. But with a bit more Prestige and a bit less Priscilla this could have been a far classier, more mysterious film, and not just a flashy exercise in computer graphics.

*The seven of diamonds? Yeah, I picked that one too.