Review of Now You See Me (2013) by Paul A — 05 Jan 2016

It's not very often that a film comes along and manages to do something different, and does it well. Now You See Me is just such a film.

The film revolves around four magicians called The Four Horsemen, which is a bit erroneous as only three of them are men, but Isla Fisher's character was crow-barred in by the studio as the original script didn't feature a female magician, and you can't have a film with four male leads and no female lead as that's sexist isn't it. Although, bizarrely you can have a film with four female leads and no male lead, (Sex & The City). Not sure how that works, but anyway I digress.

Now, first off let me say magic is shit. Unless you're 8 years old, it's crap. We know there is no such thing as "magic" it's just a trick, but unless you explain the trick, we have no idea how it happened, and therefore have no interest. People like Penn & Teller however, who trick you and then (sometimes) tell you how they did are infinitely more interesting, because there is the "wow" factor of finding out.

So The Four Horsemen (one sans penis) steal money using magic tricks. The FBI and Inetrpol are utterly clueless as to how they do this. Luckily the character of Thaddeus Bradley (Thaddeus? Really??, why didn't you just called him, "dropped my scrabble tiles on the floor to come up with a name" Bradley). Anyway I digress (again). Mr Bradley explains to the rather dim-witted FBI agent how he thinks they did it. This is fascinating, and you can't wait for the next trick, so you can hear just how clever they were at fooling everyone.

The film skips along at a good pace, there is no sign of the "boring hour in the middle" that is common place in most films nowadays, there is enough action to keep things interesting but not too much it detracts from what is going on, it's different so you don't get the feeling you are watching the same thing you've seen done before numerous times, and it is clever enough to keep you guessing and interested.

Recommended.