Now You See Me starts off promisingly, but ends on a rather flat, contrived manner which wraps up its predictable plot lines cleanly but artificially. The magic in Now You See Me was lost on me because it is too outrageous, too unbelievable, as opposed to being clever. The combination of magic and heist in this film fails because magic is about fantasy and ludicrousness. Heist is about reality- about careful planning and coordination. Many of the films revelations(which are inevitably the most satisfying part of any such film) may not be entirely predictable, but are still anticlimactic because the qualities of a good heist are absent- the stunts pulled here are too ridiculous and too fantastical for the audience to suspend their disbelief. While the cast is strong and does have individual flavour, the Mark Ruffalo and Marie Laurent characters are really not written well. They are given stock characters to portray, and the ending is quite unforgivable. This is a shame because the first portion of the film was actually quite entertaining- it proves that when a heist film has a witty script, a suave, assured sense of direction, and a clear focus on its protagonists(rather than some outside FBI agent), it can really succeed quite well. But of course the rest of the film never quite lives up to this quality in the first portion, which made for a terribly overall average film.