Film: Now You See Me 2
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe
Director: Jon M Chu
Rating:
Three years ago, when Now You See Me redefined the way we looked at stage magicians in movies, the idea of a sequel was, well, magical. Disappointingly, Now You See Me 2 is lot like paying to see Harry Houdini and watching a guy pull coloured scarves out of his pockets. Underwhelming. And definitely not quite as bedazzling.
The film picks up a year after the first movie ended - where four magicians, called The Horsemen, pulled some dazzling tricks to rob rich men dry and distribute the cash to their audiences. While we got to know that Mark Ruffalo (FBI agent Dylan Rhodes/secret leader of the horsemen/son of magician Lionel Shrike who died while doing a dangerous trick) is still with the FBI, ostensibly trying to rein in the Horsemen, but in reality pointing them elsewhere, discontent at all the waiting has set in. Also, Lizzy Caplan plays Lula May, who is the new female replacement in the team. Continuing their whole Robin Hood-meets-Rage Against the Machine routine, they go after tech giant Owen Case, becauae he has a chip that can hack into anyones device anywhere. Unfortunately, this time around, they're set up by Case's old partner Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), who wants them to do a little stealing for him.
What really made the first movie tick was the underlying suspense and the sheer anticipation of the crazy, over the top tricks that the magicians were going to pull. There's a little bit of that here too - an infinitely cool card flip routine where they're stealing that computer chip, and this whole moving rain up and about thing that Jesse Eisenberg pulls, but they all sort of fall flat - the grandeur, that sense of awe, wondering how they did it, is missing.
Lower on visual pizazz and higher on emotion and drama, NYSM 2 has also fallen prey to the oldest sequel mistake in the Hollywood playbook - trying to establish deeper connections between old characters and rewrite history. Hey, just because it worked for Severus Snape and Harry Potter doesn't mean it ought to for Mark Ruffalo and Morgan Freeman.
Daniel Radcliffe starts off well as a young tech genius gone wild, hiding in Macau, pretending to be dead whilst amassing a fortune in secret, but it all goes south when they delve into his family ties - he's an illegitimate son of Michael Caine's character, one of the businessmen who were robbed by the Horsemen in the first movie.
There are just one too many sub-plots and flashbacks to appreciate and quite frankly, most of them are too shallow to actually enjoy. Like the introduction of Woody Harrelson's evil twin brother (also a hypnotist but with a head of artificially transplanted hair and a silly accent). Another dead end that doesn't offer too many laughs really.
Mark Ruffalo, who was nothing short of brilliant as Dylan Rhodes in the first film, is an angry not-so-young man with severe daddy issues in this sequel. After a point, the whole undercurrent on daddy doldrums gets so tedious that you wonder if Darth Vader might just make a guest appearance.
At the end of it, all NYSM 2 needed to make it work was a whole lot of magic. But that pulled a disappearing act on the film. And boy, did it do it well.