Hey presto... a half-billion heist

Now You See Me (12a)
Running time 115 minutes
Rating:****
Magic tricks and cinema are natural bedfellows. Both exist as a result of visual trickery – magic by sleight of hand and cinema by persuading your brain that 24 ‘still’ frames a second projected onto a screen equals movement.
So, when the two come together in Now You See Me, the result inevitably is a treat for those in the audience who like to spot the cracks in the performance, or the mistakes in the presentation.
Whereas most of us are of the persuasion that superheroes don’t exist, when we watch a top magician at work (Dynamo, for example), there is just a little wisp of doubt at the back of our minds – “how DOES he do that?”
The same applies to Now You See Me. We know that much of what we see is done with special effects, or slick editing, but sometimes, there a shadow of doubt remains about how.
The plot of the film is a magic trick in itself – the ‘reveal’ or climax (the so-called ‘prestige’) apparently coming at the end, so that we might think that what begins as an apparent complex crime drama, complex crime drama, develops into a revenge movie, only for it to conclude as a simple con trick with a whiff of mysticism.
Whatever you think it is, the film is well-constructed, well-executed and for the purists, full of slick tricks that to impress even the best of magicians.
Four average street magicians, (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco), are invited to a mystery apartment where they get an insight into a whole new level of magic. This experience transforms them into top act ‘The Four Horsemen’ who stage gigantic, incredible tricks, such as robbing a Parisien bank of millions of euros while they remain on stage in America.
They are arrested by the FBI (in particular Special Agent Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo), but without proof are released. Even so, magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) remains intrigued.
There are more tricks, leading up to a massive open-air show where, after stealing half-a-billion dollars (the origins of which are skated over pretty quickly), the three (or four) magicians vanish into thin air.
To carry off a magic heist movie you need slick crooks – and Harrelson, Eisenberg et al are certainly that – incompetent cops (is the FBI man really all he seems?), and a smug know-it-all that gets his comeuppance (I’ve been waiting for one of Morgan Freeman’s characters to end up in the do-do for years).
Michael Caine makes a cameo appearance as a nasty insurance tycoon, adding further class to the movie, which, all in all, works its audience over a treat.
If you can explain where you are by the end of the film, you’ve either been watching too closely, or you have read up on it beforehand.
Either way, Now You See Me makes a welcome change from superheroes, end-of-the world tales of doom, or slacker comedies.
Enjoy...