BEFORE: No direct linking tonight - it's the theme of magic and magicians that carries over. Just like with "The Prestige" and "The Illusionist", there were two major releases last year about magic, at about the same time. The most obvious indirect link - Jim Carrey was also in "Bruce Almighty" with Morgan Freeman (last seen in "The Dark Knight Rises").
AFTER: I've got something of a similar quandary tonight, because I'm faced with the same problem - a film that uses movie FX to duplicate or enhance stage magic. I guess because you can see stage magic anywhere on TV or, um, on stage (duh) when it gets translated into a film, the filmmakers feel that they have to go above and beyond what is possible, and make the impossible appear possible.
In the end, I just have to shrug and remind myself that filmmakers and magicians are a lot alike - they're both trying to WOW an audience, and they're both professional liars. If a filmmaker says, "This film is about an astronaut who goes into space," well then I know that the production company probably didn't spend $100 million to buy 5 seats on a space shuttle mission for an actor and a crew, so there will probably be some FX trickery involved. By the same token, if a magician says "I'm about to saw this lady in half," then the one thing I can tell you is that a lady is NOT about to be sawed in half.
And just as a magician wants you to only "see" a woman in two pieces, and not notice the width of the table or the delay that it took to get her feet to stick out the far end of the box, a filmmaker only wants you to "see" what's on the screen, not all of the other things that went in to making the film, or the CGI involved in making the image look real. So trickery is inherent to this crazy business we call show, whether the trickster is a film director or a magician, or a screenwriter or whatever. The question then becomes, can you predict the end of the trick, and can you tell how it was done?
This film focuses on four magicians who are brought together due to their skills, in order to perform large-scale tricks that appear to be bank robberies. But again, nothing is as it appears, so if it looks like they're robbing a bank, the one thing I can tell you is that they're NOT robbing a bank. Not in that way, at least. Their stage shows feature a lot of little tricks that combine to form one larger trick, and then their three stage shows combine to form an even larger scam. I'm going to call this "well-written" because it's so intricate, and it at least seems like it took a lot of doing.
Look, the film had me at "bank robbery" - the magic tricks were a nice add-on. But then there were some clever reversals (I love a good double-cross/triple-cross plot) and on top of that there's the mystery of who the mastermind is, who put the team together and planned the whole thing - could it be the mysterious Interpol agent? The professional debunker, a former magician himself? Could it be one of the Four Horsemen acting like a pawn, but who's really a king? This kept me guessing right up until the end, which itself is no easy feat.
However, I can see how someone could feel a bit cheated by the big reveal. One could probably easily go back and watch the film again, armed with the knowledge gained at the end, and point out any number of inconsistencies. You could chalk these up to misdirection, I suppose, but that means fooling the audience of the film, not just the audiences seen in the film - and you might imagine that the audience would enjoy a trick better provided they're IN on it, and not the butt of it.
Also starring Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "To Rome With Love"), Woody Harrelson (last seen in "Doc Hollywood"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Dave Franco (last seen in "Fright Night"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Shutter Island"), Michael Caine (last seen in "California Suite"), Melanie Laurent, Michael Kelly, Common (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), with a cameo from Conan O'Brien.
RATING: 7 out of 10 trap doors
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