The movie
begins like Ocean’s Elevens, in which the magicians are picked up depending on
their styles. We have a magician, who lost its former glory, only reduced to
use his tricks to bang some girls. Also the thief who is broke and a hypnotist
who acts like a smart-ass… which is hilarious by the way. The fourth member of
the four horsemen is a woman who can escape from everywhere, which exists in
the whole movie is reduced to be the love interest of the other members. She
has absolutely no purpose. On the other hand we got the three “antagonists”. An
FBI Dectictive who dislikes his job and doesn’t believe in magic. An Interpol female
agent, which acts always unprofessional and has no other purpose than being his
love interest. Yes, the women are only nice looking sidekicks, at best. The
last one is Morgan Freeman, an ex-magician who now has a show about uncovering
their tricks.
The story
is split in three arcs. Every arc covers one of the shows of the four horsemen
with all their nice tricks. The smaller one is explained right on the stage and
give hindsight what trick they will use in their grand finale, which always
resolve around the fact, that they give their audience money from several bad companies.
The show and explanations are really nice and nothing unknown for people, who
saw a few magic shows and they of their tricks. They make sense and are great captured
by the camera. The two detectives on the hand play the role of the unknowing
watcher who grasp by everything the magicians do, always just toyed with.
The grand finals
of their show on the other hand are at least possible, but look ridiculous. It's
like, alright it would be possible to do in real life, but what would be the
chances making it work so perfectly? None, besides some really bad computer
effects that doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t be explained. It's like, the trick
would never work so let us go forward and ignore the principle of explaining
everything.
At the end
of the movie happens a lengthy action sequence which feels forced. It is too
long and depends too much about the fact, that they fight against magician with
throwing cards and “teleporting”. It's nice but not astonishing. Most of the
time we get dialogues that are enlightening by
some good jokes, which are the best thing about the whole movie. The
movie would have been boring without Woody Harrelson and Morgan Freeman. Jesse
Eisenberg and Mark Ruffalo on the other hand didn’t do well at all. I’d
expected more from such great actors.
In
conclusion:
The movies had a great idea and manages to go with it till the end
with decent explaining. Nothing that happens is jaw dropping and sometimes the
movie felt long, besides its 2h run. The cast is great and most of them at
least act decent. They the best part of the movie. Besides the unnecessary of
female characters and forced love story is the story itself interesting. The
ending on the other hand is just bad. You won’t guess it, but that doesn’t mean
it is a great one.
