Review of Now You See Me 2 (2016) by Henry B — 28 Dec 2016

Now You See Me 2 is directed by Jon M. Chu, and it stars the same actors from the first one, although Isla Fisher isn't in this due to her pregnancy, and was replaced by Lizzy Caplan as a new character in this heist thriller about the Horsemen coming back to do their usual magic tricks, that is until someone is sabotaging them, and they ended up in China.

So they have to work together to do what they tell them to do by putting another heist. I remember liking the first one just fine, but it has been years since I've seen it, and with the sequel that my mom rented, I'm skeptical about it, but remain optimistic to see it as one of the writers from the original is the sole writer of this, which I haven't seen him be the only writer and nothing more in a film since Men in Black, and this movie is more or less what I expect of it.

The acting is pretty good which I'm glad to see that they act like they still want to be here. Lizzy Caplan is a really good addition to this and bring her own fun to this with humor that's funny.

Daniel Radcliffe as the villain is an interesting choice, and he plays it threatening at times while also being funny. The magic stuff are pretty cool, while there are some of tricks in there that didn't make sense to me.

Mark Ruffalo's character is the most developed character in the film as he's giving a sad backstory that makes sense about his hatred towards Morgan Freeman's character. The writing by Ed Solomon is clever in some aspects, and I was interested to see where it was going.

There's not enough humor for me to know that it's on the joke for itself, and with the twists coming on, I either didn't care about as it's nothing shocking, or it was just predictable to know that.

The action scenes are pretty cool as where there's one scene that Mark Ruffalo's character was doing all magic tricks as attacks against them, it was well done and it made sense in terms of magic itself.

Now You See Me 2 is a good sequel that is not quite as fun as the original, but it's an enjoyable time-waster.