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NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T

Producers: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Bobby Cohen   Director: Ruben Fleischer   Screenplay: Michael Lesslie, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Seth Grahame-Smith   Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosamund Pike, Lizzy Caplan, Morgan Freeman and Mark Ruffalo   Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: C

Watching even a simple magic trick skillfully performed can be quite satisfying, because one can appreciate the craft that’s gone into making it mystifying.  But the “Now You See Me” series, which began in 2013 and spawned a 2016 sequel before taking a nine-year hiatus, has never been more than mildly engaging because it mistakes complexity for cleverness and substitutes special effects for genuine sleight of hand.  Like its predecessors, “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” despite the supposedly master prestidigitators on hand, has plenty of action but precious little magic.  What you’re left to appreciate isn’t the skill of the illusionists but the efficiency of the effects team—which, given the state of today’s Hollywood moviemaking, is a commodity that’s hardly in short supply.

Of course, viewers may also enjoy being reunited with the bickering, competitive characters they’re familiar with—the original so-called Four Horseman who put their skills to beneficial use unmasking and punishing villains.  And all four of the original quartet are back—smug, arrogant Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), card specialist James Wilder (Dave Franco) and escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Wilder’s former romantic partner.  And as if that weren’t enough, Morgan Freeman returns as Thaddeus Bradley and Mark Ruffalo (ever so briefly) as overseer Dylan Rhodes.

But that’s not all.  We’re treated to three new young magicians who begin as rivals and become allies: master illusionist Bosco (Dominic Sessa), trade historian Charlie (Justice Smith) and accomplished pickpocket June (Ariana Greenblatt).  You might be thinking: how many horsemen are too many?

In any event, it’s the newbies who begin things with an underground performance in which they fleece a crypto crook of his offshore stash using holograms of the Horsemen, who’ve been disbanded for years.  That brings a visit from Atlas, who berates them for their presumption but invites them to join him in a new mission.            

The target is Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike), the matriarch of a South African diamond company with Nazi roots that’s also the front for an international money-laundering operation.  Atlas, Merritt, Wilder and Reeves, all summoned by tarot cards from the mysterious Eye, reunite to take her down, bringing the youngsters into the act.  The first part of their scheme involves stealing the famous Heart Diamond, the foundation of the Vanderberg legacy, which Veronika is putting on auction in Antwerp for the first time in years.  The theft is, of course, an extremely extravagant business done before a crowd of rich buyers, and includes roles for all the magicians; the ample amounts of deception and misdirection are, in this case, explained afterward, even though the implausibility remains staggering. 

But that’s only the beginning of the plot to bring down the Vanderberg operation. The action proceeds next to a French chateau where both Thaddeus and a squad of police seeking the thieves show up and where our heroes, after the obligatory amount of arguing and one-upmanship, must confront rooms that shift and swerve like exhibits in some fantastical carnival.  And some of them do not escape.

An action-filled interlude in a police station, featuring more fists than tricks (as well as a surprise appearance by another character from the earlier movies), leads to a grand finale in Abu Dhabi, which includes a car chase mimicking those of every recent action blockbuster you can think of, the escape of the original Horsemen from a supposedly inescapable death trap, and a final revelation that amounts to the crowning implausibility of an already astronomically incredible scenario.  Naturally there’s a coda suggesting that further installments may be in the offing.

If one can swallow the multiple inanities inherent in a fast-moving but brainless caper movie driven by supposed magic tricks that are just special-effects contraptions, as well as assurances that split-second timing is always essential constantly undercut by crises that have to be resolved by fighting and last-minute changes of plan, “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” can serve as a harmless time-waster.  Under the genial if sometimes lax hand of director Ruben Fleischer, who was undoubtedly helped by having previously worked with two of the stars in the “Zombieland” movies, it’s certainly been done up colorfully, with a glitzy if artificial-looking production design by David Scheunemann and flashy cinematography by George Richmond, not to mention the yeoman efforts of the effects teams.  Stacey Schroeder has edited the big scenes spiffily, though some of the talky interludes lag, and Brian Taylor’s score hits the expected notes along the way.

As to the cast, Eisenberg and Sessa take the lead in their respective groups, the former honing his smugly superior attitude to a fine point in delivering his monologues and the latter smoldering with pent-up anger at being looked down upon.  The other good guys fare less well, with Harrelson reduced to depending on his familiar shtick and Franco and Fisher failing to engender many sparks as they rekindle their old love; Freeman adds his usual gravitas but not much else. Greenblatt and Smith fade into the background, though the latter has some big moments toward the close.  And then there’s Pike, who hams it up mercilessly as the villainous Vanderberg.  As one watches her over-the-top turn the thought that keeps coming to mind is: certainly those can’t be her real teeth!  But her outright exaggeration at least makes up somewhat for the lack of fizz in the banter among the Four Horsemen provided by the four screenwriters.

Fans of the series who have been hankering for a new entry will get some modest, if momentary amusement out of “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.”  Others may feel that the makers of the franchise have copied the technique that Atlas accuses Vanderberg and her colleagues in the jewel trade of having accomplished: of tricking people into believing that there’s any real value in diamonds—or in shiny but empty cinematic baubles like this.            

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THE RUNNING MAN

Producers: Simon Kinberg, Nira Park and Edgar Wright   Director: Edgar Wright   Screenplay: Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright Cast: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, Lee Pace, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Angelo Gray, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Katy O’Brian, Martin Herlihy, Karl Glusman, David Zayas, Alex Neustaedter and George Carroll   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: C-

2025 seems an appropriate year for a remake of “The Running Man”—it was, after all, the chronological setting of the 1982 novel by Stephen King, published under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman.  (King once admitted to writing it over the space of a mere seventy-two hours, ad publishing it with virtually no changes.)   It might seem unfortunate that it’s appearing so soon after Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of another Bachman book, “The Long Walk,” the premise of which was quite similar (though its cruel game involved a slow trudge rather than a hectic chase); but since that movie proved no box office bonanza, it probably won’t matter.

This version by Edgar Wright and his co-writer Michael Bacall is much more faithful to the novel than Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 movie, which was reworked substantially by scripter Steven E. de Souza to meet the expectations of fans of its star Arnold Schwarzenegger.  But fidelity is a relative term.  This “Man” follows the basic plotline of the book pretty closely, but it goes hog-wild with special effects (the sequence with Michael Cera as Elton Parrakis, the rebel who aids the hero, is expanded using them to excruciating excess), and of course it can’t abide the bleakness of the ending, instead adding a coda that assuages the present-day audience’s insistence that heroes survive, villains get what they deserve and good triumphs over evil.  As Wilde wisely observed, that is what fiction means.

To rehearse the plot: in a dystopian American of the (here unspecified) future, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is fired from his job for daring to stand up for workers’ rights.  The loss of income is devastating: his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) is forced to take on unsavory work, and their little daughter can’t get the medicine she needs to stave off a potentially fatal form of flu.

So Ben decides to try out for a spot on one of the game shows designed by The Network to serve as palliatives for the miserable lower classes.  His anger issues make him a perfect candidate for the most violent and dangerous of the games, in which three contestants are, with the help of the public, chased down and terminated by Hunters, led by masked Evan McCone (Lee Pace).  But the longer they survive over the course of the thirty-day span, the more they earn, and if they manage to make it through the entire month (which, of course, no one ever has), they become billionaires.

Ben’s chosen by the program’s slimy creator Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) as one of the three contestants in the game’s upcoming iteration, introduced by the show’s flamboyant host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) to a raucous studio audience along with reckless Laughlin (Katy O’Brian) and goofy Jansky (Martin Herlihy).  After a stop to acquire forged papers and disguises from Molie (William H. Macy), he tries to hide under an assumed name in a New York hotel.  But his first identity is blown, and he’s off running, winding up at a slum Y in Boston.  He’s found again, escaping only in a fiery blast that the program—doctoring the messages he’s required to send on tape each day—portrays as an act of sadistic terrorism.  Meanwhile hapless Jansky bites the dust.

Fortunately, Ben gets help at this point from Stacey (Angelo Gray), a ghetto kid, and his older brother Bradley (Daniel Ezra), a rebel with connections to a wider network.  They help him escape the city (here in one of those reckless car chases in which they off a couple of pursuing hunters), and after further close calls—and learning that Laughlin has been terminated in a blaze of reckless glory—he finds himself at the home of Parrakis, the son of an honest cop destroyed by his corrupt colleagues, who’s gussied up the place with all manner of cool protective devices.  But they’re betrayed by his mother (Sandra Dickinson), here a ragged-haired old crone brainwashed by conspiracy-fueled TV coverage, and those devices aren’t enough.

In the aftermath of that effects-laden melee and another chase, Ben finds himself tracked down to a freeway by the ever-searching drones and takes Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones), a prosperous but dimwitted woman, hostage in her SUV.  She’s initially horrified, but is convinced about the program’s perfidy when she’s herself depicted falsely via AI manipulation, and accompanies her captor aboard a waiting plane along with McCone, unmasked at Killian’s orders.  This is the setting of the final act, in which Killian tries to seduce Richards into joining his team; after he refuses, the aircraft becomes the setting for a long, dragged-out fight with McCone and the flight crew that leaves Williams parachuting to the ground and Ben maneuvering the plane against Killian.

So much is amplified King.  But Wright and Bacall, knowing full well that the book’s close would never conform to today’s audience’s aversion to bleak endings, add their own coda which takes advantage of the novel’s image of the downtrodden masses turning in Richards’ favor to present him, via some inexplicable sleight of hand, into the leader of a revolution against a cruel system.  It’s a pandering close that King, though listed as an executive producer, could hardly have warmly embraced.

If the reworking of the material feels compromised by modern expectations in both style and narrative, the execution is also seriously flawed.  Though Wright manages to throw in some of the mordant humor for which he’s known (one can appreciate Ben’s reply, when pretending to be a priest, to a guy who asks if he’ll go to hell for using a condom), he mostly plays things according to the tentpole playbook, and gives his craft crew—production designer Marcus Rowland, costumer Julian Day and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung—free rein to construct a vision of the future that somehow manages to be both dank and garish.  The special effects supervised by Andrew Whitehurst often come across as murky, especially toward the close, and the crowd scenes are suspiciously small-scaled.  Paul Machliss’ editing frequently seems rushed and slapdash, and Steve Price’s score generically bombastic.

As to the cast, Powell is at best adequate; he’s supposed to be an everyman thrown into situations he’s unequipped to deal with, of course, but he lacks the undefinable something that would overcome a faintly bland aura.  Brolin is even worse: his attempt at grinning villainy falls far short of what Richard Dawson brought to the Schwarzenegger version.  Cera adds more than a touch of mania to his character, and Ezra is a cooly unruffled underground leader, but no one else makes much of an impression.  Jones and Pace are nondescript, and even Macy offers little but generalized gruffness.

The upshot is that despite all the money and talent thrown into the mix, Wright’s “Running Man” turns out to be a pretty flatfooted affair.