Film of the week: Now You See Me 2

The first film in the series, Now You See Me, kept you guessing throughout. An unknown person recruited four people who are extraordinary gifted when it comes to magic and illusion, hypnotism and card tricks. It was a constant chase between the FBI and the four horsemen, who were obeying the orders from this mysterious person, with the goal of stealing someone’s money to give back to the public, and as we see at the end of the film, frame someone who the leader believed was to be responsible for his father’s death. When it appeared to be going wrong, it was going right, and when it appeared to be going right, the horsemen had won.

If you haven’t seen the first movie, then this is when you need to stop reading because there will be massive spoilers ahead.

The twist ending reveals the leader of the four horsemen is also the leader of the group of FBI agents who has been chasing them all around the world, Agent Dylan Rhodes, who’s also known as Dylan Shrike, and is played by Mark Ruffalo. The four horsemen, Atlas, Merritt McKinney, Henley Reeves, and Jack Wilder – played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrison, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco – are successful with their magic trick and escape the FBI and the film ends with them going into hiding to wait for their next mission.

One year later, the Four Horsemen are back and wowing the world as they were before with their incredible magic tricks and intelligently planned out illusions that they are confident won’t fail. A new member of the horsemen is recruited by Dylan Shrike after Henley Reeves decided to leave the group, and they hijack the launch party of corrupt businessman Owen Case whose new software steals data from unsuspecting members of the public all for Chase’s benefit. Unfortunately, things start going wrong when their hijacking gets hijacked by an unknown person, and reveals a bunch of secrets to the audience about the horsemen, including that FBI agent Dylan is their leader.

Upon their escape, they find themselves suddenly in China and talking to tech prodigy, Walter Mabry – Daniel Radcliffe – who employs them to steal a powerful device from a person who was once Walter’s business partner, Owen Case. The device will allow the user to decrypt any piece of software, break through any virtual lock and gain access to any computer across the world. They have no choice in the matter and the horsemen accepts.

What follows from this moment on kept me rooted to my seat, but unfortunately I only developed mixed feelings for the film as a whole. The first film built up its tension and kept it at that level until the end, but this had moments of tension. The scene in the lab when they are stealing the chip and they are throwing the chip, which has been stuck on the back of a playing card, between each other as they are getting searched, kept my eyes routed to the screen because I wanted to catch everything that was going on, and its tension kept gradually increasing the longer the scene continued, but when it was done, that was all you were going to get for a while until Dylan Rhodes has been dropped in the ocean whilst trapped in a safe. That blotchy effect felt unnecessary and slightly ruined the film for me.

The entire film was well-acted, brilliantly directed, and its magic did go bigger and better than the previous instalment. If I were to see any of the tricks they performed in the film in real life, especially the one with Alas controlling the weather would have been mesmerising to watch and I would probably spend many sleepless nights trying to figure out how he did that, but since it’s a film, and anything’s possible, I guess you could say that it gave the term “movie magic” a new meaning. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Much like the first film, there is a mystery within its backbone and that took the form of the many unanswered questions from the previous. Those answers stood in the shadows, and waited for the right moment to reveal themselves. They did set up certain events that would lead to the revelation, but we didn’t know that until they were explained to us. Not that I have a problem with that, because the sudden revelation at the end was an eye-opener and was enjoyable to hear being explained.

One of the horsemen’s rivals is Chase McKinney, Merritt McKinney’s twin brother who thinks everything is fun. Woody Harrelson plays both brothers, and there was something off about that. Woody played both parts well, don’t get me wrong, but it would have been a lot better if his brother was played by someone else instead, so when they communicated, you saw two different people, not the same person but dressed up differently in a film as seriously as Now You See Me 2. Daniel Radcliffe’s performance couldn’t be faulted. Each time he was on screen, he stole the show. It’s not often Daniel plays the bad guy, but when he does, he makes sure you know he’s the bad guy.

I do prefer the first film over its sequel, but I wouldn’t say it’s a terrible film. I like it for what it was, and it did end with the potential of their being more. Former FBI Agent Dylan Shrike has become the head of the Eye, so it would be nice to see where the story goes from there, but if they were to make a third instalment, it would be a shame if they used this film as a starting point instead of the first.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)