Now You See Me

Usually when I see film I tend to form a fairly consistent opinion of it shortly after seeing it, then maybe, a second viewing may change my opinion of it, The Master is an example of this (No, i’m not comparing Now You See Me with The Master), where my opinion actually improved. But with Now You See Me, I just left with the feeling of I JUST DON’T CARE.

The plot of the film is fairly straight forward, despite what the trailers promise (they also give away a ridiculous amount of the plot and the twists), it has none of the wit and ingenuity of the great heist films that work on similar ideas, such as Oceans Eleven or the narrative complexity of The Prestige.

We follow four magicians, brought together for some long drawn out, and oh my is it, scam/trick/heist/just-get-on-with-it that you have to wait for the end to see it all pan out.

I would go through the characters and give you a breakdown of the performance, but frankly most of them are largely forgettable, two dimensional and uninteresting that I won’t waste your time, like the writers and director did with the insane amount of talent they had in their cast.

It is unfair to be hard on the cast, apart from their decision to sign on, although this one of these scripts that maybe looks great on the page, but the lack of any real depth to their characters should have stood out. Greats like Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are wasted, then discarded at points in the film.

Jesse Eisenberg, whose normal style of witty delivery has been a pleasure to watch in his previous films, especially The Social Network, is wasted here on lines that are just clever for the sake of being clever, but aren’t actually clever. Maybe if someone else had been the head magician/person in charge it wouldn’t have seen so out of place.

Woody Harrelson is probably the only character who lives up to his potential, and this is because of how laid back and spot on his delivery is. This is in spite of the overtly cocky dialogue he is given, Harrelson has to work hard to make it entertaining.

The visuals which are interesting during the first act, begin to bore you, to the point where at the climax, it feels like a giant outdoor version of the Who wants to be a millionaire? Set, with massive spotlights turning on and off every few seconds accompanied by loud music and sound effects that would make Michael Bay think about toning it down.

With any kind of magic/heist film there is a lot of sleight of hand visually and suspension of disbelief required, but here the level needed is farcical. Getting more and more ridiculous as we progress from trick to trick. Another frustration, is that too much of the technology featured in the final trick is unexplained, where they had previously outlined everything, here they blissfully omit. It is important to play fair, to a degree with the audience with plots like this, but here they don’t and it just comes across as cheap. They asked questions they didn’t have the answer to.

Unlike World War Z where it was the last half an hour that I felt let it down, here after a somewhat bearable first 25 minutes, the film nose dives into boredom, smugness and delusions of grandeur as it tricks itself into thinking that something interesting is happening on the screen, and that you should care what happens. You shouldn’t.

World War Z

Taken from Max Brooks ‘ brilliant zombie novel, that charts the course of a decade as the human race, across the globe, fights back against an all encompassing virus. So when it was announced there was going to be a film adaptation of the novel, it was hardly a shock. Here was a story, rich in scope and content, with tens of characters to choose from. So what did they do with it? Yeah, they changed all the but the basic premise, ignored some of the most interesting characters and narrowed the scope.

The basic plot follows Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) as he and his family at first flee their hometown, which is filling up with fast, dangerous and hungry zombies. They flee to New Jersey, then ultimately to an armada of military ships that have sought sanctuary on the open sea (in the novel, boats aren’t as safe as they are here). Here Gerry is forced to take up his old job as a UN investigator, so his family can stay on the ship, and go and find the source of the cure, and hopefully a cure.

Pitt, as the central character, carries the film on his shoulders, and does it well, considering his revolving door of partners, which restricts him from creating any real kind of relationship. He is believable as an investigator, as he moves and talks with a confidence of a man who doesn’t need to prove his intelligence. Then when the action kicks off, and it does, he is resourceful enough and tough enough to get through the frantic action.

The quality of the film, is determined by what made it into the original script, and what was then reshot later on.  The first two acts of the film, are thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining as we follow Gerry across the globe, including two great set pieces in Korea, a brilliant night time sequence involving the refuelling of a plane whilst under attack from Zombies, or Zeek as the soldiers call them. The second, is the highly advertised Israel section, arguably the high point of the film, I won’t spoil any of the events in that section, but conjours up a terrifying possibility of the zombie invasion.

Then the film drops off and we get a climax that removes the tension and the world wide feel of the conflict, as well as giving us a happier ending, the original was decidedly darker, but much more interesting. It’s just unfortunate that the studio didn’t have the confidence to go with the original, even if it wasn’t as safe or take the same amount of care in building a franchise.

There are sequences where we see large amounts of zombies and people running together and interacting, done with real people with prosthetics, which are believable and some of the scariest in the film. There are also a large amount of CGI shots that ruin the moment, obviously some can’t be achieved with just practical effects. But this film seems scared of that middle ground, of mixing well organized and crafted practical stunts and people, then enhancing them with CGI. One of the biggest disappointments of World War Z, and there are only a few in all honesty, was that it reminded me of I Am Legend.

Go and experience this film, well not all of it, enjoy the first two acts then leave the cinema, you’ll feel more satisfied. You can read the original ending (or hopefully see it on the DVD) or just make up your own one.