You can get dizzy tracking the comings and goings in the third installment of the highly successful Now You See Me franchise. Apparently taking their cue from the Avengers films, the makers of this edition, arriving nearly nine years after the last one, features such a plethora of characters old and new, subplots piled upon subplots, and expected and unexpected cameos, that you start to long for the simplicity of a basic card trick. While Now You See Me: Now You Don’t proves undeniably entertaining, it’s more than a little exhausting as well.
The film reunites the principal characters from the previous films, including arrogant ringleader J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), wisecracking mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), sleight-of-hand expert Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), and escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher). In case you’re wondering why Lizzy Caplan, who played a major role in the last film, doesn’t seem to be on hand for this installment, well, as these movies make painfully clear, appearances can be deceiving.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
More of the same, for better and worse.
The legacy characters are augmented by a new, younger trio of magicians, apparently brought on to continue the series if the original actors’ paycheck demands become too onerous. The upstarts are Charlie (Justice Smith, I Saw the TV Glow), a magic history buff who designs their illusions; June (Ariana Greenblatt, Barbie), who excels at both pickpocketing and, when being pursued, parkour; and Bosco (Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers), a masterful prestidigitator with a chip on his shoulder.
Charlie is a student of, and reveres, the original Four Horsemen — so much so that he’s designed deepfake shows using holograms representing them that have become an underground sensation. This naturally attracts the ire of Atlas, who shows up at the warehouse where they’re squatting and rebukes them not only for their temerity but also their sloppiness. But he‘s impressed enough by their talents to recruit them for a mission in which they’re ultimately joined by the other Horsemen and their venerable mentor Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman).
Said mission involves the theft of a massive diamond owned by the deliciously named Veronika Vanderburg (Rosamund Pike). She’s the South African owner of a diamond company and also, naturally, the mastermind of an international crime syndicate. To relate the details of what transpires in the course of the operation would defy the talents of not only a seasoned reviewer but probably also the five writers who contributed to the story and screenplay. Suffice it to say that there are plenty of tricks and plenty of quips, with the emphasis between the two shifting from scene to scene.
Taking over the directorial chores from the first two films’ Louis Leterrier and Jon M. Chu is Ruben Fleischer (Venom, Zombieland), who displays comparable visual and comic flair to his predecessors. Playing like a more jocular, magic-oriented variation of the James Bond and Mission: Impossible films, the Now You See Me series features the same propensity for exotic locations — in this case, including Abu Dhabi (the site of a terrifically staged car chase) and Antwerp — convoluted plots, elaborate heists and colorful villains. And this one has a terrific nemesis in the form of Pike’s Veronika. The actress, who once appeared in a Bond film (Die Another Day), channels the best of the Bond villains with her delectably hammy portrayal here; she seems to be having the most fun of anyone onscreen. The way Pike steals the film from the principals qualifies as a magic trick all by itself.
Speaking of magic, this edition naturally features plenty of it. And while some of the illusions are obviously special effects, many are of the practical variety as well, making the film a feast for fans of the genre. The highlight is a spectacular sequence set in the former headquarters of the Eye, the secret society for which the Four Horsemen previously worked, where the characters battle their way through a series of ingeniously designed rooms featuring spatial illusions that would make Christopher Nolan envious.
The verbal and physical interplay among the original Four Horsemen remains as fun as ever, with the performers having well settled into their characterizations over the last 12 years. Not surprisingly, the younger newcomers don’t display quite the same flair yet, but there’s obviously room to grow with a fourth film in the series already announced. And since Michael Caine has said that he’s coming out of of retirement for The Last WitchHunter 2, let’s hope that he can be lured back for this one as well.
