Now You See Me’s magical Horsemen join forces with a new trio of young magicians to take down a money launderer. The film is fast-paced, fun and filled with implausible tricks. But the problematic razzamatazz includes PG-13 levels of coarse language, winking sexual references and thumping violence.
For the last several years, Bosco, Charlie and June have been working together like a trio of young Robin Hoods. They’ve used their presto-chango magic skills—June’s pickpocketing sleight of hand, Bosco’s dynamic misdirection, Charlie’s minutely detailed tricks and schemes—to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Which, of course, includes a sizable chunk for themselves.
In fact, their latest bit was spectacularly successful. They used holograms of the Four Horsemen (a famed magic group that disappeared 10 years ago) to bilk some crypto currency swindlers out of millions. The event was huge.
The problem was it put the three spunky magic rookies on someone’s radar. And when that someone, J. Daniel Atlas, steps into their hidden warehouse flat, the three young con artists are shocked. How did one of the Four Horsemen find them? And why?
J. Daniel casually makes it clear that the share-the-wealth magicians aren’t as smart as they think they are. He tells them all about themselves: where they come from, why they work well together. Then he goes on to invite them to set aside their small-time hocus pocus and join him in a big-league abracadabra. In fact, the scheme he’s putting together will actually make the world a better place.
It seems that there’s a South African diamond seller named Veronika Vanderberg who’s been laundering the money of terrorists and arms dealers around the world. Her father made his money as a Nazi war criminal. The trio’s mission will be to steal Veronika’s most-prized possession, the Heart Diamond. It’s the largest diamond ever discovered, with a price tag of half a billion dollars.
That’s not to suggest that the heist will line their pockets. No. “This is a chance to drive a stake through the devil herself,” J. Daniels proclaims. With that one action, they can shine the light of day on Vanderberg’s whole nefarious enterprise.
With that assurance, the young magicians sign on.
Of course, this won’t be a simple task. The crew will have to travel around the world; they’ll go to France, Belgium and the United Arab Emirates. They’ll be joined by the other Horsemen and guided by The Eye, the mysterious magicians’ group that recruited the Horsemen all those years ago. And they’ll have to finesse their maneuvers to the finest detail. But eventually, they’ll razzamatazz their way to a final showdown.
… And they’ll find out who’s been pulling the behind-the-scenes puppet strings all along.
Early on, Bosco, June and Charlie proclaim their desire to help people by redistributing stolen money to masses of people. And the overall thrust of the movie’s central mission is to expose Veronika Vanderberg’s criminal enterprise: an organization that benefits terrorists and illegal gun dealers.
(However, the movie quietly applauds breaking the law to make all of this happen. And that includes battling against police who are called to crime scenes. Which, of course, isn’t positive.)
The moniker the Four Horsemen is, of course, a reference to Revelation’s horsemen of the apocalypse. The Eye, as we know from previous films in the franchise, has roots in Egyptian mythology.
Henley Reeves, one of the female Horsemen, wears several lowcut, cleavage-boosting dresses. People discuss a man having an affair with his housekeeper and siring a child. There are several sexual jokes and barbs tossed around. For instance, someone asks J. Daniel Atlas if his mother had sex with a map.
There are a number of high-speed chases and thumping battles between the magicians and police (and hired thugs) who want to nab them for their crimes. In several of those confrontations, guns are pulled and fired. In one case, someone is shot in the side and apparently dies. Other people are smashed into tables and large scenery pieces; some get knocked unconscious by heavy objects. One of the Four Horsemen uses a deck of playing cards as a weapon, cutting foes’ hands and faces with thrown cards. Several people fall from great heights.
An individual steals an expensive racing vehicle and leads police on a chase that smashes other vehicles. An elderly woman falls and appears to have shattered her arm with a gruesome, bloody break. (But then the arm is revealed to be a prop.) A man dislocates his thumb to escape his handcuffs. Then he starts a fight with four other men in a moving vehicle, hitting them with a heavy object and blasts of pepper spray. At one point, it appears that someone is shot in the face. (But it’s revealed to be a trick.)
We hear a woman killed herself after discovering her husband had had an extramarital affair. Veronika forces an uncut diamond into a man’s mouth, suggesting that if he accidentally swallows the gem, it will lacerate his esophagus. Someone calls Veronika and threatens to expose her direct connection to several murders from her past (including that of a 10-year-old kid).
The dialogue is spattered with about a dozen s-words and a couple of uses each of the words “d–n” and “a–.” God’s name is misused four times. And there are two crude references made to male genitals.
The Horseman Merritt McKinney quips, “This liver’s not gonna destroy itself,” while on the way to getting a drink. And we see several of the Horsemen occasionally drinking beer and glasses of alcohol.
Though the three young tricksters make a point of giving away their ill-gotten gains, they’re not above taking a slice for themselves. We see June stuff thousands of dollars into a personal suitcase. People steal expensive gems and other items of great value. And deception is a part of this story’s fabric.
Magic tricks are generally a combination of misdirection, sleight of hand, gimmicks and props—and a clever presentation. And if you ever get to see what goes on behind a great trick, you can’t help but marvel at the ingenuity and skill of it all.
The Now You See Me films were designed to be the movie equivalent of such a trick. They’re driven by a cast of interesting, fast-talking characters who play out their abracadabra tricks and then show you how they did it. (And usually supply their own applause, too.)
The problem with a great trick is that it always has to be eclipsed by a bigger one. So this third movie entry, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, comes packing a huge cast, outlandishly expensive props and an end goal that’s so knotted and tortured that—even when it’s later explained—it could never reasonably happen.
That outcome becomes the equivalent of you flipping a nickel with your thumb and having it land in a teacup … on the moon.
Of course, I’m one of those sorts who tries to think my way through magic tricks and movies. And in the case of films, the writing, acting and production have to at least seem plausible. So I’m not marveling over this rather goofy pic and its tricks.
If, however, you’re not as concerned with such things, then this movie could well be your cup of moon tea. It’s generally fun, fast-paced and razzle-dazzle filled.
However, the content worries here include some coarse language, a few winking sexual references and thumping violence that turns deadly once or twice. And no matter how you wave your wand, those things will still pop out of this movie’s hat.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
