|
|
|
Now You See Me 2
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (14th September 2016). |
|
The Film
 Three years after having disappeared after fleecing corrupt insurance executive Arthur Tressler (The Dark Knight's Michael Caine) out of hundreds of millions of dollars, showering the public Robin Hood-style with the cash, and leaving magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (The Shawshank Redemption's Morgan Freeman) "holding the bag," three of The Four Horsemen – hypnotist Merritt (No Country for Old Men's Woody Harrelson), card trick expert Jack (21 Jump Street's Dave Franco), and illusionist Daniel (American Ultra's Jesse Eisenberg) – are set to resurface when leader Dylan Rhodes (), who has been leading a double life as the FBI agent on their trail, reveals their next exploit as foretold by The Eye: exposing telecommunications company Octa and the plans CEO Owen Case (Divergent's Ben Lamb) to sell the private information of the phone's new users to foreign governments for profit with the help of new fifth horseman Lula (127 Hours' Lizzy Caplan) who has refined her tricks considerably since she infamously pulled a hat out of a rabbit eight years before. The heist seems to go according to their meticulous plans, but they turn out to be the dupes as their electronics are hijacked and a mysterious party exposes not only the horsemen to the audience prematurely – including Jack who faked his death – but also exposing Dylan to his FBI colleagues Deputy Director Austin (Blade's Sanaa Lathan) and Agent Cowan (Taken's David Warshofsky) who had already suspected Dylan of his double life. Dylan barely escapes Cowan with a little trickery, while the other horsemen make their escape through their planned route but inexplicably end up in Macau thanks to Merrit's crooked twin brother Chase who is working for Case's former partner Walter Mabry (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone's Daniel Radcliffe), off-the-grid and obsessive about remaining so after Case screwed him over and used his personal information to convince his own company board that he was crazy. Since the horsemen's last heist drained funds from companies he invested in, Mabry feels that they owe it to him to work for him and steal from Case a chip he developed that can hack any computer network and rapidly transfer its contents. Although Merritt, Jack, and Lula refuse to work for him, Daniel – who had lost faith in Dylan's leadership long before and had sought from The Eye a path to leadership – agrees to it, planning to betray Mabry and get the chip to The Eye in exchange for clearing their names. While the four horsemen start planning out their heist and source equipment from Macau's oldest magic shop run by Bu Bu (The Face of Fu Manchu's Tsai Chin) and her grandson Li (The Green Hornet's Jay Chou), Dylan finds himself in the untenable position of having to deal with a vengeful Thaddeus Bradley, the man he framed and put behind bars as part of a long con game to get revenge on the man he believed goaded his magician father Lionel Shrike (V for Vendetta's Richard Laing) into the failed trick that caused his death in order to save his fellow horsemen. Viewers who are of the opinion that illusions are the most obnoxious of all magicians will not be disabused of this opinion with Now You See Me 2. A bloated, overstuffed epic of a heist picture, the follow-up to 2013's Now You See Me manages to be more desperate. With the characters including returning villains already established – and the fast-talking Caplan introduced swiftly – the film jumps almost straight into the heist with little shown of the planning and plenty of credibility-straining CGI augmentation of their sleight-of-hand trickery that it is obviously a setup. Unfortunately, the same approach is taken to the actual heist with the filmmakers more interested in dazzling the audience with digitally-rendered illusions and motion control camerawork than really involving them in the planning and staging as in other heist films where the suspense usually lies in the potentially dangerous hiccups and snags and how they adapt to them. Although the magician heroes live by the motto "always have something up your sleeve," the problem seems not to lie in their resourcefulness but the film's inability to create any suspense from even the most dire situations in which the characters temporarily find themselves. Of the heroes, Harrelson is entertaining in a dual role but Ruffalo is the only performer who manages to bring heart to his role while Eisenberg's arc falls flat as it is all too predictable he will learn the value of working as a team over his own personal ambitions (Caplan is wasted while Franco barely registers). Freeman and Caine just get by with their dignity but Radcliffe cannot wring any humor out of a joke of an egomaniac supervillain. The film's resolution is distended by a likely setup for another sequel which offers annoying redeems the only interesting "villain" and suggests that he is signing off of the series (hopefully a third entry will give Lathan and Warshofsky more to do than be so easily lead around by their noses by both heroes and villains). 
Video
The LionsGate's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen provides a spectacular encode with bold colors, deep blacks, and sharp and crisp rendering of the film's CGI elements. The Blu-ray is also available in a 4K Blu-ray+Blu-ray+Digital HD combo with the extras contained on the Blu-ray only while the 4K disc has only the feature. 
Audio
The primary audio track is an English Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 mix probably sound even more immersing in that configuration but downmixes well-enough. A Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo optimized for late night viewing as well as a Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 track are also included, along with a Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 dub and subtitles in English, English HoH, and Spanish. 
Extras
Extras include an audio commentary with director Jon M. Chu which is more interesting when discussion focuses on the editing of the film - the opening flashback which reveals the fate of Dylan's father was originally presented in pieces throughout the film but he decided to cut it back together as the opening rather than confuse the audience who did not see the first film - and recapping the first film economically than platitudes for its performers (other than the actor who played the young Dylan whose father actually is an escape audience and was asked to imagine what would happen if one of the acts went wrong) and set anecdotes. "The Art of the Ensemble" (21:11) looks at the film's ensemble cast, with cast and crew talking heads overstating their chemistry and how fun it was for them to work together while "You Can't Look Away" (17:14) is an overview of the film's visual scope from the sets to the location work in Macau and London. "Bringing Magic to Life" (16:09) has the stars and co-producer David Copperfield pretentiously musing on the wonder of magic and misdirection, the contribution of the film's consulting magicians, the actor's "magic camp" training, and trying to realize as several of the illusions without CGI. 
Overall
Viewers who are of the opinion that illusions are the most obnoxious of all magicians will not be disabused of this opinion with Now You See Me 2. 
|
|||||
|