If you are a firm believer as I am, in all things supernatural then you know that it is sometimes hard to keep the faith. A few choice moments that come to mind include that first day of secondary school at aged eleven and I realised my Hogwarts letter wasn't coming, and the following summer when I wasn't invited to Camp Half Blood. *Wipes nostalgic tear from eye* Every once in while though a film like this comes along, that allows you to hold on hope that your letter is still on its way.
A succession of four seemingly random street magicians, tricksters and illusionist come together to give a whole new meaning to the way we think of Magic. Their task isn't made easy when former magician now turned to the dark side revealing tricks of the trade Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) and on top of that being branded and chased as thieves by FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and suspicious French newbie Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) of Interpol. With all this attention, every good magician needs a stage name, and though I was personally routing for something along the lines of The Musketeers, Ninja Turtles or ABBA, The Four Horsemen was an okay choice. The team consists of front man J. Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg) his former assistant Hanley (Isla Fisher), a mentalist Merrit (Woody Harrelson) and trickster Jack (Dave Franco). All of whom are working for an unseen vengeance seeking mastermind referred to only at "The Fifth Horseman."
With a well chosen cast, eloquent script and intricate plot line we felt like a member of the audience of one of their shows, which really helped draw us in and probably made it a lot easier for us to be fooled. The only thing that I would note is that it was a shame that our Four Horsemen didn't get to do a lot of actual "Talking." Everyone else had a good chunk of script to allow us to understand them as a character, so we could perhaps guess their motives or rule them out as suspects. Any conversation our main act had, aside from the odd witty banter and friendly insults was on stage and therefore for lack of a better word; staged.
I sat down ready to watch this movie with an unbiased mind and was happy to discover that I was swayed towards nothing but thinking the movie would be nothing short of mind blowing within the first five minutes. When magic is your main source for the basis of a film there are literally no limits to what can be achieved. In fact trying to constrict anything that could happen into anything that can happen within your constraints i.e: Time, setting, believability and most importantly understanding for us as an audience makes it even harder to come out with something so magnificent. It's a good thing that a magicians number one rule is Always be the smartest person in the room. And they struck to that mantra as by the end of the film we were all left looking for the smoke, the strings and the mirrors because even when you think you see it. You don't.
