Jon M. Chu directs Lizzy Caplan, Mark Ruffalo and Woody Harrelson in this sequel to the magicians do heists sleeper.

The first film was a fun ensemble heist movie and the trailer promised more of the same. The only decent trick that has been performed is in the marketing as 2 is bamboozlingly bad. And while the sequel looks just as slick, and pretty much everyone is back, the follow up somehow gets bogged down in backstory whereas what came before was breezy and becomes incoherent from shot to shot when the storytelling used to be reliably solid. Gallingly it forgets to really have more than one bit of significant Ocean’s 11 style scamming (some sleight of hands and bodies with a playing card size microchip… that goes on for five minutes too long). Just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about shit no one really cares about. That and the final magic show, which really culminates in the most guessable con yet (I highly doubt that many Londoners would give a shit, think of us hurling abuse at poor David Blaine in his perspex box), betray a film that decided it should exist without ever figuring out how. New addition Caplan puts in some effort, showing up the incumbents who seem happy enough picking up a bonus paycheck while standing on their marks for a couple of takes. Ruffalo’s subplots and action sequences seem like they belong to a far darker, more serious film. Michael Caine gives a lovely one scene cameo including a placeholder swansong of serious acting in his monologue, but then decides to hang around. Is he going to treat every film for the next decade like his last, just in case? And we get two Woody Harrelsons… Which saves this from being the unforgivable 1 score. Yet imagine what a film that had two Woody Harrelson and then gave them something… ANYTHING!… we actually cared about to do would achieve? Even if it was merely one decent line of dialogue between them. A waste of all involved and easily the most goodwill insulting cash-in of the summer.

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