Now You See Me (2013)
Directed by Louis Leterrier
An FBI agent and an Interpol detective track a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money.
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29 films that influenced Now You See Me
What critics say influenced Now You See Me
Now You See Me will surely remind viewers of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, where the criminals are so talented they’re admirable, and one cannot help but root for the bad guys (who are really just good guys with a lot to prove).
It requires the obvious mention of “Ocean’s Eleven,” from which the far-fetched “Now You See Me” takes blatant inspiration (and a twist or two) without replicating its style and finesse.
If the movie itself had a bit more of that forthright urgency, it might have been a gripping, lighthearted combination of "Ocean's Eleven" and "The Prestige."
The first 20 minutes of “Now You See Me” play like a sort of “Ocean’s Eleven” with magic, in which four shady street performers are brought together by a mysterious tarot-card invitation.
Ocean's Eleven for Gen-Y, it's a 'pop heist movie' that's more concerned with looking cool than being it.
Call the setup “Ocean’s Eleven” meets “The Prestige.”
Whether it’s Jean Marais stepping through a mirror in Orpheus or George Lucas using miniatures to create a mile-long spaceship , practical effects, like a magician’s illusions, trick the eye into thinking it’s seeing something it isn’t.
If Now You See It resides below those two superb 2006 films on magicians, Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and Neil Burger’s The Illusionist, that’s because director Louis Leterrier has the energy but not the visual grace to match the elegant malefactions of his characters.
Suffice it to say, great movies about the magician's art — films like The Prestige and Edward Norton's The Illusionist — manage to make you forget that film itself is an illusion, one capable of miracles that dwarf the best stuff a tag team of Harry Houdini, David Copperfield and David Blaine could ever whip up.
And I was very happy back in 2006, when we had two competing period pieces — "The Prestige" and "The Illusionist" — about tricky prestidigitators.
In 2006, The Prestige and The Illusionist were released within just a few months of each other.
The tricks are as flashy as the plotting is flimsy in “Now You See Me ,” an illusion-filled caper from director Louis Leterrier that poses no serious challenge to Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige” or David Mamet’s “The Spanish Prisoner” in the pantheon of cinematic sleight-of-hand.
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Christopher McQuarrie described his screenplay to The Usual Suspects as "a big, well-structured magic trick" and the similarities between it and the one concocted and re-concocted by Edward Ricourt, Boaz Yakin and Ed Solomon are notable.
A cross between The Prestige and The Usual Suspects (souped up with some sly action sequences), Now You See Me, Louis Leterrier’s crime comedy about magicians, has a first-rate setup but lacks the punch of anything extraordinary.
Therefore, if a movie dealing with magic is to have any chance of working at all, it has to do one of two things-it has to either figure out an interesting way to acknowledge the fact that magic of this type generally doesn't work when not seen live, as was the case with the brilliant and underrated "Penn & Teller Get Killed," or it has to come up with a story so spectacular and engrossing that viewers will be too involved with the narrative to pay much attention to the artificial nature of the illusions.
Unusually, it has two directors of photography, both of whom are specialists in flashy, special-effects-ready extravagance: Mitchell Amundsen (" Transformers ," " Wanted ") and Larry Fong (" Super 8 ," as well as the Zack Snyder movies "300," " Watchmen " and "Sucker Punch").
Whether it’s the captivating direction (Leterrier rebooted “The Incredible Hulk” and helmed the fast-paced “Transporter”—at 26!—and its first sequel); a tense and mesmerizingly seductive screenplay by Ed Solomon (“Men in Black”) and Boaz Yakin (“Safe”, “Hostel“) & Edward Ricourt; the totally in-sync cast that carries on a nuanced, enchanting banter; the glossy, the adrenaline-racing camerawork by Mitchell Amundsen (“Wanted” and second unit work on a ton of stunt-driven tentpoles) for the action sequences, and the intricate, swirling photography of the illusion sequences by Larry Fong (“300,” “Watchmen“); a crackerjack Mission Impossible-style score by Brian Tyler; or awesome production design by Peter Wenham, “Now You See Me” is an electrifying joyride.
Unusually, it has two directors of photography, both of whom are specialists in flashy, special-effects-ready extravagance: Mitchell Amundsen (" Transformers ," " Wanted ") and Larry Fong (" Super 8 ," as well as the Zack Snyder movies "300," " Watchmen " and "Sucker Punch").
Whether it’s the captivating direction (Leterrier rebooted “The Incredible Hulk” and helmed the fast-paced “Transporter”—at 26!—and its first sequel); a tense and mesmerizingly seductive screenplay by Ed Solomon (“Men in Black”) and Boaz Yakin (“Safe”, “Hostel“) & Edward Ricourt; the totally in-sync cast that carries on a nuanced, enchanting banter; the glossy, the adrenaline-racing camerawork by Mitchell Amundsen (“Wanted” and second unit work on a ton of stunt-driven tentpoles) for the action sequences, and the intricate, swirling photography of the illusion sequences by Larry Fong (“300,” “Watchmen“); a crackerjack Mission Impossible-style score by Brian Tyler; or awesome production design by Peter Wenham, “Now You See Me” is an electrifying joyride.
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But it doesn't have the giddy champagne sense of fun of an Ocean's picture, or The Sting , or Inside Man , and I will frankly confess that having seen it once, I can imagine no real need to ever see it again.
Directed by Louis Leterrier (“The Transporter” and “The Incredible Hulk”) and scripted by five writers who are presumably unfamiliar with the concept of magic, “Now You See Me” is about a quartet of street illusionists – “The Four Horsemen” – who band together to steal large amounts of money from some high-profile victims.
But director Louis Leterrier -- whose last two efforts were the considerably larger scaled, more effects-driven "Clash Of The Titans" and "The Incredible Hulk" -- rightly realizes that the engine of "Now You See Me" is built around its house of mirrors story, and smartly uses the talents of his cast to help keep everything moving forward, even if some of the individual parts aren't as strong as they could be.
As if elaborate, mentalism-abetted robberies weren’t enough, French director Louis Leterrier ( The Transporter , The Incredible Hulk ) pulls a car chase and a mano-a-mano brawl from his usual bag of tricks.
Hyperbolic "Transporter," "Clash of the Titans" and the Ed Norton-starring "The Incredible Hulk" director Louis Leterrier has a lumbering style especially unsuited to portraying the finesse, intimacy or illusion of reality that is required to give a story like this the suspension of disbelief that both magic and film demand.
As directed by Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans), the picture starts out brisk and credibly Ocean's 11-y, a shuffly jazz score accompanying introductions to the middlebrow magicians who will become star players "The Four Horsemen."
If we apply these principles to Now You See Me - a magician thriller from The Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier - the pledge and the turn are fantastic.