After a nine-year hiatus following the release of “Now You See Me 2,” which grossed over $334 million worldwide, a third installment was inevitable. The time has come:“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” has finally hit theaters.
Each film in the franchise has featured a new director. This time it’s Ruben Fleischer who has previously worked with stars Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg on both films in the “Zombieland” franchise.
The movie introduces three new magicians, played by Ariana Greenblatt, Dominic Sessa and Justice Smith, who band together to join the Four Horsemen — the group of magicians from the previous installments — for their next heist: the largest diamond in the world. The cold open that presented the three actors new to the franchise was one of my favorite scenes in the movie — it kept the allure I had liked in earlier moments of the franchise.
The keeper of the diamond, Veronika Vanderburg, played by actress Rosamund Pike, fit a cliché powerful CEO who would do anything to protect the diamond in her possession. Although the movie focused more on the backstory and development of the magician characters, Pike is too good of an actress for an extremely unoriginal villain role such as this one.
Amid a mysterious voice over the phone, a love interest that appears towards the middle of the film and a death serving as motivation for the other characters, I found the plot laughably predictable as it ticked all the boxes of a banal mystery movie.
For an all-star cast that featured not only Eisenberg but also Hollywood stars Lizzy Caplan and Mark Ruffalo, I expected the acting to be at least watchable. I found the dialogue to be poorly written and that made for some cringe-worthy line delivery.
Many of the characters’ stories were incredibly underdeveloped, and a good part of the 113-minute runtime was action sequences. This made little sense to the concept of the movie, as I wasn’t sure how a cast of magicians were able to physically defeat not only local police officers, but members of Interpol.
Yet, the movie was a good curl-up-on-the-couch movie, full of laughs warranted by Caplan’s character Lula and a great score curated by Brian Tyler, who has worked on some of Hollywood’s highest-grossing films over the last 28 years. I also found the international element of the movie to work seamlessly, bringing the characters from Abu Dhabi to Antwerp to New York City in a way that felt highly entertaining.
It’s also worth noting that the plot improved greatly as the movie progressed. A scene early in the movie where the Horsemen attempt to open locks at a house in France made viewers felt like an escape room, which was an exciting moment. This was followed by a dreadfully bland sequence of each of the new characters doing a magic trick to impress Eisenberg’s character, Atlas. At the end of the movie, however, a scene between Vanderburg and Charlie was exceptionally well-done with a plot twist that helped some of the troubling loose ends feel a little more digestible as the credits rolled.
Even when the dialogue fell short, I was still able to enjoy the visual effects. One scene I particularly enjoyed was where a character catches a bullet with his teeth, skillfully fusing magic and action.
For a third installment in a franchise that has received mixed reviews by critics, it lived right up to my middling expectations. If you’re looking for an undemanding film experience, consider this most recent Fleischer flick.