Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Now You See Me ... Now You Don't

THE CLOSER YOU LOOK, 
THE LESS YOU'LL SEE


The movie begins by introducing us to the four street magicians who were performing their individual tricks at different locations. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), a street performer with his poker card tricks. The typical I-can-guess-what-card-you've-chosen tricks. Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), a bigger scale performer who risk her life performing an escaping show on stage to the thrill of the audiences. Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), a mentalist who can hypnotize and read the minds of others. Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) with his random tricks and sometimes stealing money from his audience.

While they are performing at different locations, we see the same guy in a hoodie observing them from far, his face was never shown to the audience. 


Eventually, the four magicians path crosses when they each received an "invitation" to gather in the form of a tarot card and what seems to promise them the membership to an exclusive magician society known as The Eye. 


One year later, they join forces and performed in Las Vegas as The Four Horsemen. We were told that the show was made possible by their wealthy sponsor, Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine). Sitting in the audience seat and secretly filming the whole performance is Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), a former magician who earns money by exposing the secrets behind other magician's performances. Their last act to rob a bank with the help of an audience and a teleporter gets the attention of the law enforcers. All the money in the bank was really gone and we see the money dropping all over the theater. FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol agent Alma Vargas (Melanie Laurent) is called up to investigate with this case. 

Anyway, the Four Horsemen continued with another two more performances but the ending was the main twist of the whole movie.


Revealing of the fifth horsemen!!!

* If you have not watched the movie and intend to watch, please do not read on.












The fifth horsemen was actually the FBI agent Dylan! He was the son of the magician who attempted a underwater trick and drowned. He created this plot to take revenge on those involved.

Thaddeus, for humiliating his father. The bank in Paris and Tressler's Company, which refused to pay out the insurance claim on his father's death. The Company that produces the safe used in his father's trick, they used inferior quality of metal and indirectly contributed to his father's death. Dylan was living in poverty until The Eye recruited him.  

Credits:


Interesting reads: 





This is a very intriguing movie. It's one of the few movies with a better storyline. However, watching a magic show performance on the movie screen just lacks that excitement. It's like in a movie everything can be made possible with the help of some CGI and editing. Magic is already unreal, an illusion and then there's a scene whereby Henley was trapped in a giant bubble and was floating away. Far too exaggerated. I felt that every characters in the movie is fully utilised with their individual different role. I actually have much higher expectation before watching the movie because so many of my friends all told me it's nice and such. 

Rating : 3.5/5

PHOTOS OF THE DAY


Trying on my manager's black frame specs. I seriously need to consider changing my specs already. 


Precious moments at Tiong Bahru. 


LASTLY...


Due to the haze issue, somebody with a creative mind created this on SGAG. 
Now You Can't See Me, because everybody's wearing a mask. Good one! 

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