Watching Now You See Me, I couldn’t help but think I was watching Ocean’s 11 with magic. This isn’t a complaint, just an observation. And it’s not just because Now You See Me is a heist movie. It’s also the tone, the snappy dialogue and that the audience is worked through each magic heist after the fact.

Just going by the cast alone, I’m surprised I didn’t see Now You See Me when it was in the theater. Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg…these are people who draw me to movies. Isla Fisher too, but for, um, different reasons.

The highlight of Now You See Me for me was that Morgan Freeman’s character, Thaddeus Bradley, narrates a movie within the movie, which made me laugh because Morgan Freeman IS movie narration these days.

There was something about the ending that didn’t jibe right with me. I’ll go into it after this picture of Dave Franco doing his best Gambit, so that anyone who wants to avoid SPOILERS, can.

Okay, so Mark Ruffalo’s character, Dylan Rhodes , the lawman who is always one step behind The Four Horsemen, is revealed to be the mastermind. I’m fine with that. I personally thought it was going to be Melanie Laurent’s character, Alma Dray, for a few reasons. One, it looked like she was feigning being asleep when Ruffalo walked into her room in New Orleans and found her passed out reading that book on magic. It seemed like she wasn’t really asleep and was planting that there for his benefit. Two, it really did seem that she could have fudged her whole Interpol background when she showed up. But I was wrong. Rhodes is the mastermind. Fine.  And I thought they explained Dylan’s motivation well (though if Alma was the mastermind, his motivations would easily have carried over to her without any many changes). What I don’t get is, is The Eye real? And if it is, does Dylan actually have a connection to it, or was that all for the benefit of tricking The Four Horsemen into doing what he needed them to do.  I noticed on IMDB that Now You See Me 2 is in pre-production. Hopefully some of these questions get answered in the sequel.