Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that is heavily reliant on the mythology already established in the first movie, which doesn’t seem wise considering how convoluted everything already is. But it picks up with the magicians-slash-thieves The Horsemen still in hiding. Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) is getting frustrated with having to wait around, and is starting to resent having to take orders from FBI agent Dylan (Mark Ruffalo). But soon enough, they’re working a new scheme, one that has them revealing a tech company’s unscrupulous practices regarding their customer’s privacy. They’re joined by Lula (Lizzy Caplan), replacing Henley who has apparently given up the life.
But their plan goes wrong, and the Horsemen wake up in Macau. They’re taken to the home of Walter Mabry (Danielle Radcliffe), a reportedly dead billionaire now running all manner of things completely behind the scenes. The Horsemen are forced to steal a piece of technology for him. Meanwhile, Dylan is left to turn to former nemesis Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) for help in finding his comrades. Along the way, all manner of secrets are revealed about their new antagonists, and The Eye, the mysterious organization that the Horsemen have been working for.
One can’t really parse this plot too closely. It is twists all the way down, and at some point it just becomes easier to accept it as quickly moving nonsense. Drama-wise, the film invests a lot in redefining the roles and motivations of the characters from the previous film. But there is no real emotional payoff to it, these characters all just pawns in a giant chess game that is designed to be obscure and hard to understand. So it’s better to just let go of the story and concentrate on the construction of the magical set pieces.
To that end, the film is hit or miss. The heist sequences are the best. There is still some thrill to seeing stage magic used as the elements to a robbery. This sequel overuses its terribly contrived form of hypnotism, but there is still a lot of fun to be had from watching quick changes and sleight of hand and card tricks as parts of a complicated scheme. The film’s best sequence involves little more than the manipulation of cards, the movie building tension out of the simple movement of one playing card across the four characters.
But things bog down near the end as the film starts to explain all of its tricks. As the illusions get more elaborate, the film spends more and more time sketching out how all of its tricks work. And it gets a little tiring. The thing is, the tricks aren’t even all that complicated, and the movie already lays down a lot of clues that a moderately attentive viewer can pick up on. The film also struggles with more basic things, like the construction of action sequences and chase scenes. The choppy direction renders them incoherent. The acting is all pretty entertaining, the entire cast clearly having fun playing on their various public personas.
All in all, Now You See Me 2 is moderately entertaining. It just doesn’t feel like it’s worth sitting through all of the movie for the fun sequences. The film spends so much time on its mythology, which doesn’t things at all. The more revealed about The Eye, the less remarkable our heroes seem. Like with its tricks, the movie ends up explaining too much. And it doesn’t spend enough time just making magic. The film has license to be as absurd as it wants, and we’ll accept it for the sake of experiencing the fun and the wonder of a good magic trick.
My Rating:
