I think the writers thought, hmmm let's list all the "must be in a movie" patterns and write words around them: car pursuit and crash, I give a watch to my little boy so he can tell the "watch story" next to the fireplace (what was that), two agents that don't like each other kissing in duty (what can she possibly see in that guy), authoritative idiots everywhere, supposedly powerful men who are rivals over who knows what.

The magic tricks were cool and Jesse Eisenberg and Isla Fisher were cool too, I watched the movie because Jesse was in it I admit. But Marc Ruffalo was such a pain, he plays really badly, he was a douche towards his female colleague, "i didn't ask you, I asked him", "stay in the car", "doing a little sight seeing?" -> massive douche!, yet she's kind of a possible romantic partner, we don't know. But he was just really bad in his role, I didn't believe any of it. Also you are left with many questions: why did he do all that? "welcome to the eye" -> what? What happened to the insurance guy? Why did Marc Ruffalo try to stop the Jake magician if his partner was already blocked? In the end, what was the purpose of it all ??? Also the end... did you get it? Nothing adds up really. All the magic books thing, and the eye stuff, and the Interpol woman saying "some things are better left unexplained" -> what ?! why are you even an Interpol agent ??? Pure fluff.

When I watched the trailer I thought the movie would be very sophisticated, kind of a mind game mixed with interesting strategies a bit like "21". But it wasn't, it was really just fluff with added "to do scenes" and sometimes funny lines:

"I'm touched. But I didn't tell you where I was touched".

Also I would have renamed "horsemen" into "horse-persons", there was a woman with them, good golly!

"The 4 horse-persons" so chic, isn't it?