Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Jesse Eisenberg | ... | ||
Mark Ruffalo | ... | ||
Woody Harrelson | ... | ||
Dave Franco | ... | ||
Daniel Radcliffe | ... | ||
Lizzy Caplan | ... | ||
Jay Chou | ... |
Li
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Sanaa Lathan | ... |
Deputy Director Natalie Austin
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Michael Caine | ... | ||
Morgan Freeman | ... | ||
David Warshofsky | ... | ||
Tsai Chin | ... |
Bu Bu
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William Henderson | ... | |
Richard Laing | ... | ||
Henry Lloyd-Hughes | ... |
One year after outwitting the FBI and winning the public's adulation with their Robin Hood-style magic spectacles, The Four Horsemen resurface for a comeback performance in hopes of exposing the unethical practices of a tech magnate. The man behind their vanishing act is none other than Walter Mabry, a tech prodigy who threatens the Horsemen into pulling off their most impossible heist yet. Their only hope is to perform one last unprecedented stunt to clear their names and reveal the mastermind behind it all. Written by Production
This film is undeniably visually dazzling, arguably to the point of being exhausting. But what I'm taking from this dubious new genre, if you could call it that, is that filmmakers shamelessly exploit and yet devalue the nature of real-life illusionism (i.e. "magic"), in which the magician actually has to make something work that looks impossible or highly unlikely (it's a trick), by making use of the nearly endless possibilities of film, in which things that would be impossible in real life can actually be accomplished on screen. So we get things like Lizzy Caplan apparently vanishing into thin air in Atlas's apartment, and since magicians, of course, don't divulge how they accomplish their tricks, the film takes advantage of this by doing things that in all likelihood really are impossible no explanations or credibility necessary.
Since we all know that you can do all these things in the movies anyway, what's the point of making them into magicians, when you can watch a Harry Potter movie and you don't really have to wonder how people in paintings can move?