When it came to glossy, enjoyable and utterly ludicrous nonsense that still, inexplicably made you want to punch the air with glee, the 2013 heist thriller Now You See Me was a surprisingly engrossing slice of bunkum that fetishised illusionists to a near embarrassing degree. Essentially a riff on Stephen Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven franchise that had the cast pulling doves from pockets while it yanked plot twists out of its ass, it nevertheless proved to be fluffy escapism that remained immune to only the most grumpy of viewers.
Of course, an encore performance by the Horsemen seemed all but inevitable, but when the quartet returned three years after their debut it seems like they’d made a few alterations with their act. Firstly, original director Lois Leterrier had bowed out in favour of Crazy Rich Asians’ John M. Chu who had already cut his teeth on such projects as some Justin Bieber concert movies and the G.I. JOE sequel. Additionally, one fourth of the Horsemen, Isla Fisher’s Henley Reeves, had pulled a vanishing act of her own, so could the Horseman still manage to pull off the same old magic with some rather vital changes?
It’s been eighteen months since the illusion-based magician group known as the Four Horsemen pulled their last, Robin Hood-esque heist, cleaned out unscrupulous insurance magnate Arthur Tressler and went into hiding before the FBI could close in. However, while the secret fifth member and group leader, Dylan Rhodes, continues to hide in plain sight while seemingly chasing his tail at the Bureau trying to “catch” his own team, the other members are tiring of a life spent waiting for the mysterious order of secret magicians known as the Eye to let them merge back into society.
Egotistical Daniel Atlas has his eye set on Dylan’s leadership role, card shark Jack Wilder is sick of still being technically “dead” and Henley Reeves has actually quit the team after her relationship with Atlas went sour. Still, mentalist Merritt McKinney is still hanging around trying to learn card tricks and soon the group has their empty slot filled by the excitable form of Lula May who joins just in time for the Horsemen to get a new target. However, just as they’re using their typically flamboyant means to stick it to expose a corrupt tech CEO, someone manages to somehow trick the tricksters and get the drop on meticulously careful group.
Suddenly finding themselves in China after trying to flee from a rooftop in New York City, it seems that that may have possibly may have met their match in the form of Walter Mabry, the illegitimate son of their old target, Tressler. Hoping to get revenge for his old man and with Merritt’s toothy twin brother, Chase, in his corner, Mabry demands that the Horseman work for him now, but while Daniel, Merritt, Jack and Lula try to figure out how to get out from under his thumb, Dylan finds himself in an uneasy alliance with old enemy Thaddeus Bradley that shines some new light on his father’s death. Can the Horsemen manage to whip up some of that old magic, or will they be exposed as nothing more than an alaka-sham?
As boring a deduction as this might be, but anyone who found the first Now You See Me to be spirits lifting guff of the highest order will most likely be similarly overjoyed by the sequel which, rather counterintuitively, restrained the urge to call itself Now You Don’t. The cast is (mostly) all back – including some of the villains, the movie focuses more on the heists rather than the slightly vapid magic acts and the plot does what it can to keep the swelling ensemble mostly busy while Chu gets to work providing visual fireworks to accompany the expected flourishes. In fact, while the sequel is missing the rather substantial surprise factor of the original, it does actually manage to correct a few weak spots here and there as it goes and while the end result maybe somewhat intellectually lacking, who said a film about robbery pulling magicians had to be fucking rocket science?
As I stated back in the review of the first film, the most bland aspect about the original was curiously when turned our attention from Mark Ruffalo’s dogged red herring and actually focused on the Horsemen themselves. Less a quartet of intriguing individuals and more a series of flashy ciphers who wasn’t even technically planning the heists they were taking credit for, the fact that they were supposedly five steps ahead of everyone else led to some entertainingly far fetched reveals, but none of them were particularly likable.
However, with the sequel now forcing the Horsemen to play defence thanks to the machinations of Daniel Radcliffe’s highly punchable villain, their vulnerability makes them far more fun to spend time with. For example, while there was technically nothing wrong with Fisher’s character (written out due to the actor’s pregnancy), Lizzy Caplan’s bubbly Lula proves to be something of a breath of motormouthed fresh air and elsewhere the script also throws the cast some half-assed bones to keep them individually busy, such as Dave Franco’s desire to give up his ruse of being dead and Jesse Eisenberg’s urge to weasle out leadership out from under Ruffalo. But while some plotlines seem put in place purely to fill out some contractual obligations (Ruffalo and Morgan Freeman’s team up to discover more about the former’s past positively screams of side mission), others seem distractingly weird such as Woody Harrelson pulling double duty and chewing scenery as his own flouncy, Liberace-toothed twin.
Also, now that the Horsemen are on the run, it also means that they have to get their hands dirty onscreen rather than magician-splaining their way through the trick after the fact. In fact, the films crowning achievement, an absolutely ludicrous scene that involves them all pulling all sorts of sleight of hand type bullshit in order to keep a playing card-sized component one step ahead of the most protracted frisk-down in cinema history. In fact, the set piece may in fact be the perfect litmus test of the franchise so far, because if you can buy all the card flicking shenanigans that goes on in that single scene without telling the movie to fuck off, then chances are this is probably the series for you…
Just as big and just as dumb as the first movie, Now You See Me 2 obviously isn’t a movie to be picked apart and studied for the ages, but rather is to be mindlessly dazzled at preferably with an overflowing bag of popcorn on your lap. Sure, the cast is on the verge of overflowing (did Harrelson really need to play two characters), the villains are somewhat ineffectual and logic is often nowhere to be found, but Chu’s delivered a follow up that whips up the appropriate razzle dazzle whether it makes actual sense or not.
Prepare to be amazed, as for their next trick, they’ll make plot logic completely… disappear. Poof!
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