Johnson Thomas
Staring illusion in the face
Film: Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025)
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosamund Pike Director: Ruben Fleischer
Rating: * *
Runtime: 112 min.
The “Now You See Me” trilogy, is basically about magicians pulling a con on powerful bad guys and redistributing that wealth among the public - in a sort of modern Robin Hood activism. In this third entry the Four Horsemen return along with a new generation of illusionists to perform mind-boggling magic while being involved in a plot to steal the world’s biggest diamond.
The new director Ruben Fleischer and writers Michael Lesslie, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese, Seth Grahame-Smith mix the old with the new ( fresh additions to the team and some new tricks) to keep the interest in the series going. The magic tricks don’t exactly impress but the plot twists and turns are enough to keep you moderately interested.
Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), the forceful erstwhile leader of the group continues to be at loggerheads with his team. The team consisting of mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), card shark Dave Wilder (Dave Franco), escapologist and Danny’s ex girlfriend Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), resist his authority and there’s a lot of bickering, and insulting going on. The opening sequence has Charlie ( Justice Smith), June (Ariana Greenblatt), and Bosco Leroy ( Dominic Sessa) out a crypto scamster and redistributes his wealth. Danny, impressed by the trio, recruits them to join the Horsemen in Antwerp to assist them in their mission. The diamond they plan to steal belongs to a South African, International crime syndicate boss Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike). Morgan Freeman has a brief role as Thaddeus Bradley, the retired ex-magician and former Grandmaster of The Eye, a secret society for magicians.
Danny’s plot to steal the diamond during a rare public appearance in Antwerp feels half baked at best. There’s no great flair in the trickery here and the stakes are rather mediocre. The narrative is crowded with unexplained backstories and generic hostility. Convenience and contrivance motivate the flashy tricks department here.
The “Now You See Me” movies are not told as a convincing story. The flashback reveals don’t offer much in the way of explanations. They only manage to repeat the illusion. They are cursory and convoluted in the way they are structured. There’s a lot of flash and dash but nothing solid to take home as a memory.
Ruben Fleischer who took over the directorial baton from Louis Leterrier and Jon M. Chu, manages to make this a comedy thriller with exotic locales, convoluted plots, fancy heists and vivid villains. Abu Dhabi and Antwerp are the places where the choicest stunts are staged. All the cast members are fairly competent. But it’s Rosamund Pike as the villain in chief, even with a bad South African accent, who manages to make a meal of her villainous role. She is the most vivid and engaging in a film that fails to corner glory even with its plethora of magic tricks.
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