Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025)
2013's Now You See Me was a hit about the Horsemen, a quartet of illusionists (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco) who performed heists during their shows and shared some of their loot with their audiences. It was enough of a hit to get a sequel in 2016, which did okay domestically but very well internationally. Nine years after that, they ran it back with the ho-hum Now You See Me: Now You Don't.
The film starts with three new
illusionists (Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Justice Smith) imitating the
Horsemen. Soon, both they and the original film's quartet are recruited by a
mysterious entity to steal a valuable diamond from an evil South African
diamond heiress (Rosamund Pike).
A problem that movies have as they
churn out sequels is the compulsion to bring all the old characters back while
also introducing new ones. This can be a problem even in series that start as
two-handers (e.g. Lethal Weapon), but in a series like this that opened
with a fairly crowded ensemble, it becomes very overstuffed in a hurry.
Also, since it's been nine years since
the last film, the movie has to do a lot of work to bring viewers up to speed,
so there is a great deal of expository dialogue. But even with all the
explaining going on in the script, the events still don't always add up.
There are a couple of decent
close-quarters fight scenes where Greenblatt has to avoid being captured by
cops in a small police station room and Sessa has to fight his way out of the
back of an Interpol truck. Overall, however, Now You See Me: Now You Don't is
the kind of film likely to disappear from viewers' memories not long after they
watch it.
