THE day after French-born director Louis Leterrier’s caper movie opened around Oz, some enterprising PR flack scored a hit when ABC Breakfast News screened two segments of interviews with actors and clips of action. That coup obliquely reflects the film’s themes, show-biz magic and bank robbery.
Many of the convoluted plot’s judiciously-timed revelations are themselves structural legerdemain that doesn’t explain itself until just before closing credits start. That’s clever. But it keeps us from becoming too aware of lax character development.
The protagonists inhabit clearly defined camps. The cast is well-upholstered with big names – Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Isla Fisher, Mark Rufalo. Close-ups of conjuring tricks often record genuine routines performed by the actors. Or do they? Wider shots have just gotta be CG fakery delivering images that would be either impossible or too costly to stage in reality.
The package is entertaining, escapist, fun. You need to deliberately scan its images (apologies for splitting that infinitive) to find what Leterrier and his cast are working so hard to conceal. My favourite is Isla Fisher having 60 seconds to escape from chains in a glass tank before a school of piranha joins her. Were the fish real, or CG ? They looked to me to be authentic Serrasalmus species. But the trick’s aftermath suggests something else.
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