Movie #902: Now You See Me 2

Now You See Me 2 is, of course, the sequel to Now You See Me, and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson (twice!), Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Dave Franco, Morgan Freeman, Mark Ruffalo, and Michael Caine.

Following the events of the first movie, the Horsemen - Danny Atlas (Eisenberg), Merrick McKinney (Harrelson), Jack Wilder (Franco) - have been in hiding, Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman) is in jail, and FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (Ruffalo) is still in the Bureau, happily directing attention away from the Horsemen (Isla Fisher's character has been given a "way out", because Fisher was too pregnant to do the movie). Atlas, being the somewhat egotistical little jerk that he is, is prodding at the association of magicians called the Eye and trying to get something to do. He goes home and finds a geek/shock magician Lula (Caplan) in his apartment.

And, boom! They get a job - to take down the Mark Zuckerberg of this world, Owen Case (Ben Lamb). The gig goes horribly awry and the Horsemen wind up in Macau, shanghaied by Merrick's twin brother Chase (also Harrelson, but with a terrible wig) and Case's supposedly dead business partner, Walter Mabry (Radcliffe). Meanwhile, Rhodes gets exposed and goes on the run, and winds up busting Bradley out of jail to help him track down who's doing this.

It becomes the standard "bad guy forces the good guys to do a job for him" kind of thing, but with some cool-looking illusions. The Horsemen do a heist in Macau to steal a MacGuffin, Rhodes gets stuffed in a safe and thrown in the bay, they reunite, they put together a big show in London to expose Mabry, who turns out to be the illegitimate son of Arthur Tressler (Caine), the billionaire the Horsemen screwed over in the first movie. And then we close with the reveal that Bradley was actually part of the Eye all along, and was a friend, not enemy to Lionel Shrike (Richard Laing), Dylan's father. He sods off and leaves the Eye to the Horsemen, and roll credits!

So, I'd seen this before, and I didn't remember much about it. It's entertaining, but not as interesting as the first one where we're getting introduced to these characters. The movie is really at its best when it's allowing the characters to do their acts and amaze us, though as I said when I talked about the first movie, it's hard to feel the "ooh!" of stage magic when it's in a movie. The chemistry between the leads is still good, and Lizzy Caplan gets to be slightly more involved than Fisher was, so that's nice. Once again, the stuff the characters can do stops just short of supernatural, or kinda crosses that line with regards to Merrick, who seems to be able to mind-control people by whacking them on the chest and saying some alliteration. 

Daniel Radcliffe makes for a fun, very smarmy, villain, and Jay Chou is great in the few scenes he has. I'm looking forward to the next one because I know Fisher's back, and one thing I really appreciate about this movie is that it plays fair by its predecessor. I hope that continues. 

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Planet Terror