Review of Now You See Me 2 (2016) by Bootsyfever — 21 Nov 2019

Praise the lord, the dark hole of the first movie has been removed (Isla Fischer if you don’t remember) and been replaced by the exceptional Lizzy Caplan. Who, dare I say, has been wonderfully cast, except for the fact that she has been forced into a love interest with Dave Franco, but I digress.

It’s amazing that such a small change has paid dividends and has led to the 2nd incarnation of the magic heist film a more tolerable movie going experience. Is Now You See Me 2 perfect? No, not even close, but it is paced more cohesively and is centred around a theme (security in the 21st century) that I can momentarily invest myself in. Credit should go to director Jon M. Chu who was able to put together compelling scenes and keeps the film on track. The momentum of the film feels about right and climaxes well even if the ending was a little poor, more on the ending later.

Where the film does fall apart is once again in character development/arch. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) wants to be the leader but learns his not, pretty boring. Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) falls in love with Lula (Lizzy Caplan), pretty boring even though I loved the Caplan implementation. We find out that Merrit McKinney (Woody Harrelson) has an evil twin brother Chase (Also Woody) which is a very difficult pill to swallow but you learn to accept it. And Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is all over the place.

These character failures really come down to the objective of the movie; too shock, too awe and too swerve. In order to do this it sacrifices character cohesiveness and it doesn’t take long for a character like Rhodes to totally lose his identity all together.

For example Rhodes very quickly gets founded out as a rat and part of this magical mafia, the Horseman then get kidnapped and Rhodes who ends the first film as a calm, collected, magician is substituted for this brooding, out of his element character that is more likened to his FBI persona. It’s confusing and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Though, I will credit the introduction of Daniel Radcliffe into the mix whose tone and energy was a nice touch to the antagonist role, that wasn’t full of cliché on liners and inexplicable motivations. But back to that ending; though there is nothing technically wrong with it, it was just kind of a letdown. Basically the Horseman are back on top after being subjected to the evildoers and Chinese ninjas and are sprinting to end the film with one last hurrah, as expected of course. It starts off well with a few mini performances around London but the big reveal at the end left me a little high and dry (trust me that’s funny watch the film). What made it that much worse is there was this incredibly long explanation after the bad guys were jibbed that involved the horseman explaining their victory while the bad guys stand there with no thought of trying to escape. It was just weird. This ending exemplifies this franchise so far. It has many things going for it, strong acting pedigree and compelling a concept and what I am most impressed with is that it has improved on itself. But what still concerns me and what leads to the film falling flat is with incessant need to make sacrifices in order to achieve a cheap surprise or lead to an overpriced computer generated sequence. Now You See Me 2 is a step in the right direction but it still has a long way to go to.