Four different magicians, Danny Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) and Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) are brought together to a New York location by a strange tarot card that they have received and while here they receive details related to some elaborate magic tricks. We then cut to a year later where they are on stage in Vegas as The Four Horsemen performing a trick based around the theft of a vault from a bank in Paris and are thanking their new benefactor Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) who is head of a major insurance company.

This seeming real theft puts the Horsemen in the path of FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and an Interpol agent (Melanie Laurent) who are investigating the robbery and while they are almost certain the Horsemen are guilty they have absolutely no proof so they turn to Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) who is a renowned exposer of the truth behind magic tricks. When, during a subsequent act the Horsemen seemingly transfer millions from Tressler’s accounts to members of the audience Tressler agrees to hire Bradley to track down the magicians and it becomes apparent that there are links between the Horsemen and to a group called the Eye who claim to have the power of real magic.

Director Louis Leterrier, who also directed another movie I recently reviewed, the awful Grimsby Brothers, does a good job of keeping us on our toes through numerous chase sequences and in a movie where nothing is as it seems the twists and turns of secret identities, revenge for former acts and underground brotherhoods, in general, are not telegraphed. Although some of the magic scenes do require a leap of faith to eliminate any disbelief you may be feeling I suppose that’s what magic is anyway so I could accept that.

The stunts are all interesting if a little far-fetched and the four leads are all good as the Robin Hood type public heroes, although Eisenberg was the stand out for me with an almost neurotic personality that he does very well but the problem came when the rest of the cast took centre stage as Ruffalo wasn’t his usual strong character, Laurent wasn’t given a lot to work with as she swung back and forward from agent to awe struck fan, Caine was, assumedly, added as a box office pull as he had little time on screen and Freeman, while a little more central to the plot, really only acted as the voice of exposition as he spent the movie explaining how each magic act was carried out.

Overall, it was a decent movie but it relied a little too heavily on the glitz and glamour scenes of spectacular feats and explosions and if you’re looking for a really good movie with some real suspense based around the world of magicians check out Christopher Nolan’s excellent The Prestige instead.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10