Now You See Me (2013) - This Week in Film Podcast

Now You See Me (2013)
Featured in: Week 36
Discussed by: Nick

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Nick’s Week 36 Now You See Me Notes:
(I’m not fixing any of these typos, you’re welcome):

*directed by the competent Louis leterrier, who did the first couple transporter movies and the under rated Incredible Hulk

• it stars Jessie eisenberg, woody Haroldson, Isla fisher, Morgan freeman, mark ruffalo, Michael Cain. A dynamite cast.

*But This movie was terrible.

• spoiler alert for this movie

*the movie has no main character. You think it’s going to be Jesse Eisenberg, but it’s not. You don’t realize it isn’t him until about 45 minutes into the movie when you notice he hasn’t been on screen for 20 minutes.

*so then you think, oh maybe it’s mark ruffalo. He’s an FBI agent hunting these guys. He’s on screen most of the movie. He’s risking his life. But nope. It’s not him.

*the movie also has no clear antagonist. Is it the four hoursemen, eisenbergs wizard gang? Is it Morgan freeman whose looking to make a lot of money on revealing the magicians secrets? Is it Michael Cain whose a rich guy? Nope. I guess it mark ruffalo because he is the hooded man in the hooded sweatshirt. But why? What the hell was this movie about?

*the movie really feels like a story that was written backwards and they came up with a ridiculous series of twists and turns for no reason other than they had to fill two hours and to try to make the audience think the movie was being clever.

*there was deliberate misdirection with the French interpol lady. But then they don’t even trust the audience to suspect her in the first place, so there is literally a scene where Morgan freeman calls mark ruffalo up to say, “hey maybe she’s working with them”.

*speaking of them. What are the four horsemen even working towards? They don’t know, but blindly follow a series of instructions they are given by a movie. They don’t know why they are committing crimes other than “well it’s got to lead to somewhere”

*this felt like a really cheap knock off of first George Clooney oceans 11. Really confident characters with an objective you just know they are going to achieve and while there are a few hiccups here and there, even the problems end up being all part of the plan. It’s exactly what this movie was going for but fails so bad.

*It fails because we never know who to root for.

*also, the crimes committed are laughably lame. They rob a banker. They rob the rich guy they work for. Then they rob a bank vault. I’m not sure whose that was. But it’s a heist movie that plays to the lowest common denominator.

*its cheap. It’s a movie that attempts to act complicated with its big twists and turns when really all it does it make it up along the way, and then literally have to explain the ending because it doesn’t make any sense.