Invictus

Written at the time of the film's release...

"No One Plays 100%"

Rugby for the sake of rugby does not a movie make. John Huston's Victory, a soccer film about soccer, is a listless affair even with a cast that features Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Pelé. But Clint Eastwood's Invictus,* about Nelson Mandela's uniting of an apartheid-torn South Africa though a burst of sports-fever, manages to tell a deeper story through the guise of a sports-film. It's a ruse that's perpetuated throughout the film as incident after incident of potential assassination or terrorism is exposed as something else; the fragile coalitions uniting the divided country are constantly in danger of exploding into violence, and the reminders are all around.

Reminders is exactly what Mandela is fighting against. His personal mandate is to keep the past in the past and move towards a united future. A former terrorist and prisoner, as president of a deposed Dutch government, he re-casts himself fresh to serve his country's interests, and finds the most difficult part of the job convincing others to do the same. By uniting former enemies under a common interest, the hope is the citizenry can at least start to look at each other without suspicion. 

Eastwood lays out the territory in his first elegant shot, panning from a neatly manicured grass-field filled with well-appointed white rugby players, up over a rigid fence to a city street and beyond it, to a ram-shackle wire fence holding back a vacant lot of towns-folk playing rugby as best they can. They have the one thing in common, but that's it. And that's the start.

A major criticism of the Eastwood style is a tendency to over-state the case, and that is in abundance in this film: through ham-fisted characters like a full-of-himself sports-announcer who provides story exposition in the most patronizing way; in the performance of Morgan Freeman, who, though stooped and halting, does not in any way project Mandela's fragility, making him more of a wax-work representation than a characterization; the occasional too-blunt dialogue.

The dialogue is where the movie fails; the direction is where the movie succeeds and surprises. One becomes more interested in the film's back-story of how Mandela's security detail—once on opposite sides of a political conflict—now must forge a bond to protect the president and each other (there is a situation in which they are clearly over their heads, and the empathy for them knows no boundary). The coming-together of the group stutters and evolves organically, far smoother than the soccer story.

But once, the soccer story kicks in—that's when things get very interesting. Field sports are tough to simulate and make authentic-looking (even The Damned United avoided it, for the most part, with archival footage), but Eastwood doesn't shy away from it, going in close, slowing the action down, amping up the stakes. The final game of the 1995 World Cup between South Africa's Springboks and the Māori-themed New Zealand All Blacks (there's some historical irony for you), where one should expect the film to start to drag, instead becomes a brutally intense struggle that more than serves as a metaphor for government struggling against itself and its own inertia to gain some ground in accomplishing some good. You can gripe all you want about stodginess and speechifying, but in subtle and surprising ways, Eastwood and crew bring you back to a thoughtful, invigorating re-appraisal of the themes through the action of the film, delivering a moving sub-text that elevates the film far beyond words. One goes into the film expecting one kind of film, and walks out amazed at how fulfilling, and skillfully presented, the film is.

* Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849 - 1902)

The Dark Knight Rises

Written at the time of the film's release.

The Bane of Our Existence
or
"Okay, What Joker Put Yeast in My Dark Knight?"


"All stories end in death, and he is no true story teller who would keep that from you"--Hemingway

"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story"--Welles

So, Christopher Nolan's "Batman" trilogy ends in a nearly 3 hour film that neatly wraps up the story. How does it end? That would be telling. The comics went through a phase where Bruce Wayne ruminated that he was working towards a world where he wasn't needed. That's a nice little "buttoning up" of the "Dark Knight" story, but it's not complete. What of Bruce Wayne? Nolan has the opportunity in his version to really end it—he doesn't have to sell comic books next month—so, he can take it anywhere he wants to go. And one realizes (if one really wanted to end the story) that the only real happy ending that could be achieved is if Bruce Wayne became the one thing he never knew as a child—a caring, present father. Anything else makes the story a tragedy, and Bruce Wayne the last victim of the gunman's bullets that killed his parents. Given this series' downbeat tone (that of the sacrificial martyr) and of the available previews for The Dark Knight Rises, such a scenario does not seem likely. Given that, Nolan can take the tragedy of his hero in any number of directions.

Bane (Tom Hardy here) is the perfect villain to bring into the mix. A hopped-up minor character, he is best known as the lead antagonist for the "Knightfall" storyline (that seemed to last a couple years). In "Knightfall," the drug-pumped super-villain released every criminal in Gotham's prison system for The Bat to deal with, while he hung back, biding his time. Then, when the Batman, weakened and exhausted, finally confronted him, Bane broke his back, leaving Wayne paralyzed and unable to fight on. It fell to the rest of "The Batman Family" (including the once-and-future "Robin's") to take on the mantle and continue the fight.

Nolan's canvas is a bit broader, taking into consideration the events of the two previous films to create something a bit more apocalyptic, a rumination on the fractious quality of good vs. evil and the slippery slope to Hell that ideology and good intentions can be tilted towards. Nobody's pure in this one, there's no whack-job with delusions of grandeur behind the assault on Gotham City, with avarice their sole motive. Everybody, wearing white or black, thinks they're doing the right thing. And everybody's wrong.

It's eight years since the events of The Dark Knight that resulted in the deaths of D.A. Harvey Dent, Rachel Dawes, and the subsequent disappearance of the man suspected in the killings, the Bat-man (Christian Bale). Now, Bruce Wayne is an exile in his newly-rebuilt Wayne Manor, walking stiffly with a cane due to some unknown injury (part of me wants to think it was due to him being stabbed by one of The Penguin's umbrellas). He sees no one, is a recluse, and there are rumors he's turned into a Howard Hughes-style eccentric, apparently due to a massive investment in a clean energy prototype that failed and cost Wayne Enterprises a fortune...or at least half of it.

The chief backer for the project, Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) tries to get past the constant guards of faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine, putting in the most emotional performance he's done in years) and Wayne exec Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who fill the functions of acting as Wayne's heart and brains (and conscience), if not as surrogate Mother and Father. A rival exec, Daggett, is trying to take over W.E., by any means necessary, in this case, employing a terrorist named Bane, who has his own bones to pick (and break) with Gotham's golden boy. At the beginning of the film, Gotham in morosely complacent (and obviously filled with exposition), having cleaned up crime by the draconian Dent Anti-Crime Act, which has incarcerated over a thousand criminals in Gotham's Blackgate Prison.

But things are percolating underground, disrupting Gotham's infrastructure.  Bane has an army of misfits and big plans that have outgrown the desires of his patron, and there's a lithe cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who is caught with her hands in the Wayne Manor safe by the man himself ("Oops," she says, not very convincingly). Yes, she's pilfered Martha Wayne's pearl necklace, but more importantly, Bruce Wayne's fingerprints. What does she want with those?

It's only one piece in an intricate puzzle of escalating consequences that Batman must unravel if he is, once again, to save Gotham City, and he must confront his past and overcome great injury, physical and emotional, if he is to prevent a catastrophe...one of his own devising.

That's the gist of it, but it is convoluted by elaborate set-pieces that are, frankly, jaw-dropping, and ends up with Gotham isolated from the rest of the nation, in the hands of criminals with big ideologies and little concern for how roughly they're applied. The police are paralyzed—most of them trapped in the deep infrastructure of the city (a little too conveniently) while Bane initiates a countdown to total destruction.

A countdown of five months.

To quote The Riddler:"????" Five months? How suspenseful is that? And you'd think that somebody, somewhere, would be able to unravel the plot or situation in such a time-frame. But, it's basically a set-up for what Nolan depends on to generate suspense throughout the movie—the last minute "save," that is usually explosive and comes from nowhere, because the writer-director has made motivations ambiguous enough as to be unreadable.* Everyone has got a secret that will be revealed at the most opportune moment of drama. If the mystery was revealed in a drawing room, it would feel like cheating, and the revelations almost psychic.

Speaking of unreadable, Tom Hardy's Bane is hampered by a mask of a morphine dispenser (to keep him from feeling pain), as opposed to the enhancement-juice-pumping-apparatus from the comics (This leads one to ask: if the guy can be stopped by breaking the mask, why does Our Hero employ so many body-blows?  Face-shots, man!!). He is perpetually muffled by this thing, which Hardy compensates for with an almost jolly Father Christmas speaking style, making a clever, unnerving ying-yang effect for the character. Ultimately, though, he's something of a vapor-tiger, like Darth Vader, the big bloated bloviator who's merely a "blind," a distraction for the real danger.

But...five months??**

Another thing: Nolan has come out publicly saying that he wants to make a Bond movie (and the snowbound facility infiltration in Inception is a bowler-tip to them). I would submit that he already has, this film being it. So much of it is borrowed from Bond that all one needs is a casino scene to make it complete (a costume party has to suffice***). The opening sequence, the-villain-that-feels-no-pain, the duplicitous females, obligatory "Q" scene, the tick-tock final set-piece and other aspects can be attributable to Bond films of the past. At least someone is borrowing from the Bond series this time, instead of the other way around.

But, his world of comic-book fantasy is far more gritty and down-to-Earth than any other, and that's what makes "The Dark Knight Trilogy" good; it's relatable, it feels like it could happen, if someone had the will, the wherewithal and the wallet to do it. It also feels of our time. There's been a lot of gas about the politics in this film—uninformed, desperate gas—but the whole uprising scenario, the subjugation of the privileged with no benefit to the less fortunate, the breaking down of society and the cleaving of its people is the stuff of water-cooler vitriol and feels like the temper of the times. The Tea Party AND the Occupy Wall Streeters can both find things to point at and go:"See?"

I'm not going to speculate which side is right, and Nolan is obtuse (and politically slippery) enough to play it right down the yellow stripe of the road. But, this British director is saying something about the State of the Union with a full child-warbled rendition of The Star Spangled Banner (before a particularly horrific football game) and a shot of American flags in tatters on a city street, deep in the movie. They're there for a reason, but not for anything specific enough other than "we're a fragile alliance and we're in trouble."

And that we need heroes—selfless ones, for whom profit is not a motive—and that, "anyone can be Batman."****

* Case in point:  there's a scene where Catwoman uses a Wayne-supplied bat-bike to blow a hole in a tunnel to make an evacuation tunnel for the sealed-off city, a task initiated by the Caped Crusader.  Following it, Nolan sits on a pull-in shot of Hathaway with an enigmatic smile on her face that communicates...nothing. Except an odd complacency. It will only be resolved...if there's anything TO be resolved, later in the film. 

** There are neat touches, and a refresher of both The Dark Knight AND Batman Begins will help. One nice thing—Nolan recalls a scene from BB when a young Bruce Wayne falls down a tunnel and is subsequently rescued by his father, by having a similar scenario played out here, with the Obi-Wan presence of a dark father figure from his past. Nice touch.

*** A masked ball at which, like in Batman Returns, Bruce Wayne doesn't wear a mask.  Heh.

**** Just not Nicolas Cage, please...

What do they say at Marvel? "What a poser..."

 

The Dark Knight

The Warner Bros can't seem to catch a break making movies—although "The Sandman" mini-series is very good*—so, let's go back to those halcyon days (or knights) when they seemed to know what they were doing with their DC Comics properties. Like 2008.

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Ya Wanna See an Actor Disappear?"

No, that title is not what you think it is (and shame on you for going there), but Heath Ledger does such a sick, twisted, inspired version of Batman nemesis The Joker, he blows away all pre-conceived notions of the character and his own acting history. Ledger literally gets lost in The Joker, with the smeary, sloppy make-up, his voice that goes from wormy-Richard Dreyfuss to bellowing Ahab-roar (with occasional stops at Bugs Bunny chirpiness), and a gait that sometimes shambles, sometimes totters, sometimes Frankenstein-stomps. All that theatricality is entertaining, but it's the moments of lucidity that are scary. "You're insane!" says Gotham mob-boss Sal Marone (Eric Roberts, doing relaxed, sleazy work), not without reason. "No, I'm not," replies the self-proclaimed Agent of Chaos resignedly. "No...I'm no...tt!"

Ledger's not the only show in town in The Dark Knight. Aaron Eckhart makes a complicated "White Knight" of DA Harvey Dent (it's really his story), Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne and booming Batman are deeper than the portrayal of Batman Begins--more soulful, less Bush-brash--and Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman do able support for roles slightly more down-played than the last film's. This time, Gary Oldman's Lt. Gordon has more to do, and the longer he's on-screen, the better you like him, and Maggie Gyllenhall gives the character of Rachel Dawes more of a spine (with a contrarily slinky walk) than Katie Holmes was able to provide.

The buttoned-up script is full of triangulation. There's the good-guys—Gordon, Dent and Batman—against an Axis of Evil—The Mob, Joker and Chinese financiers (and when one disappears from the screen they're replaced by another). And that's about as black-and-white as things get. Everything else is in convoluted, mordant shades of gray. There's the romantic triangle of Dawes and Dent, with Bruce Wayne as third-wheel. The Batman "team" of Wayne, Alfred and Lucius Fox (all ensconced in the Wayne Enterprises high-rise while Stately Wayne Manor is being rebuilt).

The plot devices are triangulated traps that have an either/or scenario with a third more-horrific option--which becomes The Joker's trademark, ensuring that something bad will happen no matter what. Targets are coordinated in sets, separating the weak from the herd and laying a further trap. It's Joker's way of providing Gotham "a better class of criminal." Batman's vigilantism has made the common petty thief think twice about stepping out of line. Now the Joker sets up elaborate conspiracies that bait and switch and then turn on a dime to a more complicated and deadly resolution.

"You've changed things." he crows at Batman. "There's no going back." When Wayne begins to question whether he needs to take deadlier action because Joker has "crossed the line," Alfred reminds him "You crossed that line first, Master Bruce." Hours before, Wayne had considered giving up the fight with a legitimate civic-minded public figure arriving for Gotham in Dent. Now, he's fighting harder than ever, if only to not step further across that moral line dealing with the new criminal madness. And The Joker? He starts to take actions protecting The Dark Knight, realizing that they can't kill each other: "You.. complete me" he cackles, in one of the chilling laugh-lines he spouts in an interrogation scene.

The Dark Knight ticks along (although it's overlong by half an hour--Director Nolan has a hard time knowing where to stop the escalating madness), with increasingly bizarre acts of cruelty (the film gets a PG-13 only because Nolan cuts away from some of the more grisly aspects--but takes the character design of one iconic Bat-villain in a more charred and eaten-away manner than even the comics devised).

By the end, some of the cast has been culled, and a long entrapment scene has gone on far too long, with still another set-piece just around the corner. At some point, every one of the good guys takes a hit, usually for noble purposes, but each keeps plugging away, trying to prevent having to put tooth-paste back in the tube, as consequence upon consequence piles up. And in the end, The Batman must re-adjust his modus operandi, taking on a new guise in his battle, one that he can only accomplish alone. At the same time, he handicaps himself to ensure he can't cross the line with too much power. He's left running in front of a metaphorical fast-moving train, knowing that at any moment he's going to have to turn and stop it.

"Dark Knight?" This thing is black as pitch.

In fact its relentlessly gloomy, and the sick thing is one looks forward to Ledger showing up for some light sickness to contrast the darkness. In fact, what has distinguished the "Batman 2.0" series of films is how they take the super-hero tropes and make them...practical and familiar. Nolan has kept this film-world translation of Gotham City looking gritty and realistic--far more so than the high-spired, mono-railed futuristic Gotham of Batman Begins--and the feel of the film is of an intricate crime drama, rather than a super-hero epic. The opening bank robbery is a nicely taut set-piece with more than one twist. And Nolan is far more adept at staging his action than previously. But by de-clowning The Joker, one wonders how some of The Dark Knight's three-color villains will translate to this milieu. One wonders where one goes from here. And one anticipates the next installment when this one has ended.

And that's a genuine accomplishment.

* Will I do a review? We-ell, I don't usually do streaming mini-series (although I broke that rule with the old British mini "Edge of Darkness") We shall see. You can dream, can't you?

 

Oblivion

Written at the time of the film's release...

Finding Oneself in the Future
or
Scavenging the Sci-Fi Landscape

The new Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion (written and directed by Joseph Kosinski from his "unpublished" graphic novel* and whose previous film was Tron: Legacy) is a science fiction tale that borrows very liberally from the last 30 years of movie sci-fi to the point where you swear you've seen the movie before. 

You have, but which one depends on the reel of the film you're watching.  

The year is 2077.** Earth has just survived a long, devastating war with an alien race that, in its final act to "poison the well" destroyed Earth's moon, creating dire ecological conditions for the planet, wiping out civilization and leaving its coasts under hundreds of feet of silt from tsunamis and tidal devastation. Folks have moved to the moon Titan, off the rings of Saturn, the last remaining humans being Jack Harper (Cruise) and Vicca (Andrea Riseborough), a mated team of tech-mechanic and monitor whose job it is to keep the giant moisture evaporators running Titanville or wherever and keep them up and running from complications, both natural and unnatural. The natural being wear and tear and the unnatural the last vestiges of the die-hard combatants—Scavengers—who are still trying to tear apart the fragile mining of Earth's resources to defeat the human race. Jack monkey-wrenches and Vicca runs data, all under the watchful work-schedule of Sally (Melissa Leo) who oversees their efforts from a large rectangular control station in orbit around Earth, called the Tet.***

So far, so hum-drum. Yes, there's a lot of background that Cruise has to spew in the first ten minutes, but basically he's playing another working class stiff doing a dirty job in the future.

Jack and Vicca are a happy-in-love working team, awaiting the day when they can get off this rock and join civilization on Titan. Jack, bothered by dreams of the observation deck on the Empire State Building and a smiling beauty (Olga Kurylenko) in the New York crowd, gets in his dragonfly of a jetcraft, repairing busted defender drones, and keeping a wary eye on "scav's."  

Cruise's futuristic mechanic keeps an eye on those moisture-vaporators

That's just the set-up.  Things, as they are wont to do, "get complicated" and to say how would start a cascading spoiler effect that will ruin the movie. I can't even talk about influences without giving away key pieces of information that will kill the "reveals" (even if one does see some of this stuff coming from light-years away), so let's just say that you'll spend the same amount of time playing "name that reference" in post-screening mode, as you do actually watching the movie. (Would one call that deja-viewing?  And shouldn't a science fiction movie be looking forward, rather than backwards?****) 

One key sequence echoes Planet of the Apes. Jack's patrol sector is the former northeast coast of the U.S. (and we get a respectful nod at the decimated Statue of Liberty), but only that section, as there's a radioactive "border" he can't cross. He is told at one point to go explore beyond his limitations and into the radiation zone if he wants answers. One could easily hear Dr. Zaius echo the words "You won't like what you find..." in the background. This leads to the biggest revelation of the film, but, instead of answers, it just leads to more questions, which the film goes into warp-drive trying to explain, not very successfully, as plot-holes and logic disconnects begin to eat away at the movie like nano-viruses.

And science-fiction movies usually have a message for us livers-in-the-now, either cautionary or revelatory.  Oblivion fails there by having as its message that we are replaceable cogs in the wheel of society's meat-grinder. That message was delivered by Fritz Lang's Metropolis way back in the silent era of movies in 1927. Here we are in the 21st Century (when we should all be wearing jet-packs) and that's all we get...besides the obligatory shoot-outs and chase sequences? If there's a message there it's along the lines of "Take out the recycling."

*—"well, then, it doesn't really count, does it?"—

** The film is extraordinarily exposition-heavy in the beginning in a long narration spoken by Cruise.  So much so, that one wonders why they didn't just make a movie of the events spoken of in the exposition. The reason why makes up the plot of the movie and reveals the Cruise character to be the most unreliable of narrators.

*** Amusingly, the first sign we get of the orbiting Tet is a glimpse of it, traversing the globe on the new logo for Universal Studios at the film's beginning.

**** And, appropriately, into the future. One of the previews preceding Oblivion is for Elysium, the new film by District 9's Neil Blomkamp, where the 1%ers have moved to an idyllic space station, while the rest including cyborg-ish freedom fighter Matt Damon robo-cops attitude against the machinery of the uber-klass. The two movies could be book-ends for each other.  Think of the double-bill (and the headline): "Oblivion /Elysium/ Expatriatic/ Tedium"

Now You See Me

Written at the time of the film's conjuration.

"Sometimes The Magic Works, Part 2"
or 
The Slightest of Hands

Bullwinkle: Hey, Rocky!  Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Rocky: But that trick NEVER works!

The tagline for Now You See Me, the latest film by Louis Letterier (who brought to you the modern version of Clash of the Titans, a not too bad film, actually, as empty-headed gladiator-myth movies go) is "The closer you look, the less you see," and, even though that's supposed to be saying something about the power of illusion, it couldn't be more appropriate for the movie it's supposed to be selling. You'll get the most out of this movie if you're asleep during it.*  

Better yet, don't get rooked into it, and do the opposite of the film's title and don't see it at all.  Because there's movie-magic, where you feel the sense of wonder and amazement, and there's the kind that just makes you feel that you've been "taken." Now You See Me makes me feel like a rube.

And that's the mastery of marketing. Great cast, with a bunch of actors who've got taste and have done terrific things before...and James Franco's brother, Dave...so there must be something to this, right? I mean, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine,** Mark Ruffalo, Mélanie Laurent,*** Michael Kelly, and the Zombieland duo of Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson. No slouches there.  

But the movie is such a drab circling-camera edit-fest (it feels like it was shot on a Roomba) that you know you're being misled somewhere, and you're being made to not think about what's going on on-screen, because, ultimately it makes no sense whatsoever. The point of the movie is distraction, and there the movie succeeds quite well. It's so busy and flashy, you stop thinking and take in the swirling, swooping actors and camera moves, and let them wash over you...and your brain stops. It's only at the end that you realize that the movie is a white-rabbit and it's disappeared, if it even existed in the first place. Orson Welles said movie-making is smoke and mirrors, and there are plenty of mirrors here, but the result is pure smoke.

What's it about? Four street magicians Daniel (Eisenberg) card-sharp, Merrit (Harrelson) a mentalist, Henley (Isla Fisher) escape artist, and Jack (Franco) pick-pocket, all accomplished, all a little larcenous, are recruited by a mysterious presence (who has surreptitiously observed all of them disguised in a hoodie—what, they couldn't see the face?) to form a guerrilla magic team called "The Four Horsemen." They, after a jump of time, go from nothing to large coordinated shows, bankrolled by an insurance tycoon (Caine). The first, in Vegas, involves the seeming transportation of a French citizen to his bank in France, that results in the sucking of millions of euros out of its vault, and spraying it throughout the large theater crowd...as if by magic. This attracts the attention of the FBI in the form of agent Dylan Rhodes (Ruffalo) and Interpol's agent Alma Dray (Laurent), who pursue the clues and try to ascertain how they pulled off the heist. Along the way, they interview Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman), a magic debunker, who has a vested interest in exposing the Horsemen for a series of buzz-kill videos and reality shows. He shows the agents how it was done, then stops there, being very cagey about what the next scam will be.  As it turns out, it's in New Orleans, where Caine's insurance magnate tries to buy off Freeman to no avail.

At this point, you're wondering not about the "how," but the "why?" What's everybody's motivation in this?  Freeman's stakes are relatively paltry—the group has just gotten started, who would care—so you begin to suspect he's behind it all. Caine's interest in unimaginable, as he's putting out a large outlay of disposable cash for events that have no residual value, and leave him open to accessory and fraud charges. And the agents' zeal is largely enigmatic (matching those of the Horsemen). What's everybody in this for, other than to propel the movie? It's a bit like The Sting (which had the guts to put the motivation up front) only skin-deep and with shallow surface-flash. Letterier and script-writers Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt provide no fore-thought, but just speed things up and turn on the pyrotechnics, so there's no time for questions and little room for answers, while the actors go through their paces with looks of ambivalence so as not to betray anything.

There's not that much to betray. Once everything has been revealed (save for the fate of the Horsemen), there's no satisfaction, only a feeling of emptiness and pointlessness ("Really? All that for that?") and then you begin to question everyone's behavior during the film, which makes no sense given the actions displayed throughout the movie. One almost thinks that the film might have multiple endings, depending on which cineplex you go to, so tenuous is the resolution and back-story.  It doesn't bear close examination.

But then, we were warned. "The closer you look, the less you see."

And it has nothing, absolutely nothing up its sleeve.

Note from James in 2021: There was a sequel—Now You See Me 2. I didn't.
 * No Morgan Freeman jokes, please...

** Well, Michael Caine, he used to sign up for supermarket openings...

*** ...spent the whole movie wondering where I'd seen her before—Inglorious Basterds.