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I, for one, am 100% in support of the film’s concept. They are whimsical, fresh pieces of entertainment, and they contain a lot of famous personality actors portraying hip, good-looking characters. Moreover, they are not adaptations or reboots, and they perfectly indulge in their ludicrous basic concept where stereotypically cool-looking magicians are able to take on the role of Robin Hood to fight against evil corpulent businesspeople who seek to take over the world with their money. Sadly, the first one’s execution is, to say the least, pretty bad. Instead of figuring out how to portray sleight of hand through the medium of film by framing the scene so that the eye is tricked, it just demonstrated things to you and explained everything with overly boring dialogue and flashbacks. The end product was somewhat similar to listening to a friend narrating an incredible magic show: he kept saying it was parrel and you wished you had been there to see it unfold in front of you.
“Now You See Me 2,” which brings together the branch of magicians for a new heist/adventure, provides more of the same simplistic narrative, replacing long flashbacks, spinning cameras, and turning scenes with real magic. It is hard to be awed by the spectacle and there isn’t much of it here.
The movie revolves mostly around pointless movements and speaking endlessly, aside from some action scenes. The most notable scene features our protagonists passing a card between each other while they are in a lab and there is just enough sarcastic conversation exchanged among competent actors that time, indeed, passed without too much pain.
Like any other film, this one tries to explore basically everything and over-explains a lot of events so much that it seems as though there is no structure to it at all. The Four Horsemen, now including a so-called tech wizard and a newcomer Lula (Lizzy Caplan) who replaces the last installment’s Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) gets caught up in Walter Mabry’s (Daniel Radcliffe) ultra-diabolical schemes. Walter’s got a chip that can magically make a copy of all private data in mobile devices from all over the world. Mixed up in the new story is a revenge story featuring FBI agent and secret fourth Horseman, Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), who is up against magic blaze veteran Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) who was in prison at the end of the last installment but appears to be a puppeteer in this one.
There’s a parallel revenge story involving the group’s benefactor from the previous film, Michael Caine’s billionaire Arthur Tressler. We all know how vindictive he is, so it would be tremendously boring for me to explain clearly how Tressler comes into the story, considering there is no mystery behind the point of trying to conceal it while the script is saving Tressler’s entrance until quite deep into the picture, Caine is heavily featured in the ad campaign, so all the audience has to do is connects the dots when they see him again.
The film follows a group consisting of Dylan, Lula, Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) who, by the way, is alive despite pretending to have died in the previous movie, so don’t whine at me about spoilers because he’s on the poster too and Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson). They are all traveling to Macau, China, a city that is known to be the Las Vegas of Asia and the birthplace of illusionism. While the crew attempts to remove themselves from Mabry’s grasp, they try to get in touch with the owners of the oldest magic shop in the world. This magic shop is an ancient hole in the wall that is managed by Li (Jay Chou) and his mother Bu Bu (Tsai Chin). They are able to stage tricks that also serve as cover for their pieces of misdirection, which in turn distracts from some other hidden agenda. Most of the major characters have motives that are so concealed that they supersede any other rationale. The entire plot is explained through hyper-edited, over-narrated flashbacks that make the audience believe that what they thought they were seeing was the opposite of reality.
Thaddeus shows up to teach about magic’s history and traditions, while also allowing viewers to take a quick break to grab some snacks.
Like its predecessor, the sequel manages to capture the audience’s attention, although it is with almost no effort from the writers. It’s like watching a more bizarre version of Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” series, where the actors seem to only take the plot seriously at points. Ruffalo is the sole exception with the help of his backstory as forced to deal with deep childhood trauma with a father who was an illusionist and died in New Jersey in 1984 while performing a televised Houdini-type stunt. He would have performed the trick if Thaddeus had not been insulting him to the point of pretending that he was a real magician. Somehow, some way, Ruffalo one of the most underrated American actors believes that can aid a whole division of FBI agents investigating a group of spinster magicians and one hundred miles of the gestation of my wormwood delusion accepts it. Only to soothe underscores the gaps that have nursed for over thirty years It’s absurd, but he makes it sound so effortless. Thaddeus explains Dylan’s loathing is a source of power for a “long con,” and yes, he’s not wrong.
What is even more lacking in logic is the fact that Merritt has a twin brother. Of Course, an equally Harrelson is set in a wavy fright wig that Merritt is quite right in saying looks as if it is made, “entirely from old men’s pubes.” This completely new character is always played by Harrelson, and just as is customary for him when he portrays family members of people he is related to perfectly the resemblance is uncanny.
To the shock of some older audience members who believed that being a bartender on Cheers was Harrelson’s peak, he has proven to become one of those character actors gap with a leading male presence that is pleasant to watch, even if the material is bad. It is well known that he will give his all and show how much respect he has for the material without feeling tedious. The joy he gets from playing opposite himself in this movie is about the only thing that makes director Jon M. Chu’s G.I. Joe Retaliation and screenwriter Ed Solomon’s less-than-stellar work somewhat tolerable.
Like the first one, which was done by French action director Louis Letterier The Transporter, this one is a series of cross-cut set pieces interspersed with lengthy speeches in convincing English and CGI trickery and lavish transitions. Most of the subplots, particularly the hint of romance between Jack and Lula and the Mabry Tressler relationship, are not even a quarter-baked, much less half.
With its endearingly incompetent narration and its touristic depiction of Macau nightclubs, casinos, and narrow cobblestone streets, the film is perhaps best viewed as a cousin of those zany and over-the-top Chinese action comedies from the ’90s.
One project that comes to my mind is the “God of Gamblers” series, where Chow Yun-Fat plays a master card sharp and daredevil having an unknown identity to everyone except his close associates due to him somehow not getting photographed during his photoshoot. Even a billionaire Mawry presumed to be dead, and now living off the grid has a line linking him to Chow’s character in the “Gamblers” films “In a world of total surveillance, the only true power lies in not being seen.”
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