Nine years. That’s how long it took for the Now You See Me franchise to get the kind of “legacy sequel” treatment that took Star Wars thirty-two years and Halloween forty, one that even the 2000s Ocean’s Eleven films have yet to receive. Fitting, really, for a series that always believed its tricks were sharper than they actually were, dressing up its half-baked twists with slick style and a score that yelled, “Cool heist movie!” Now this mix of heist and magicians is back with younger faces who treat the original Horsemen like legends, and every returning character enters the screen as if they were icons we’ve missed for decades.
It’s hard to blame the studio for taking this route. The industry isn’t the same place it was when the original came out in 2013. In 2025, success mostly depends on having either a big name filmmaker or a shared universe behind you. Mid budget heist films have found more favorable homes on streaming platforms. Interest in this particular series had faded after the (extremely) weak second entry, so the only real way to spark interest again was to treat the reunion of Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, and Isla Fisher as an event in itself, whether or not audiences even remembered their characters’ names.
The third installment introduces three new magicians, Bosco, Charlie, and June (Dominic Sessa, Justice Smith, Ariana Greenblatt), who use deepfakes to pose as the Horsemen while pulling a Robin Hood style scheme that funnels crypto wealth from billionaires to the poor. The stunt draws the attention of former Horseman J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), who receives a card from “The Eye” instructing him to join the newcomers on a mission to steal a heart shaped diamond from Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike), the powerful matriarch of a global crime syndicate who “makes bad people possible.” Later, the remaining Horsemen return as well after receiving the same card.
Directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom), the film shifts the franchise from its Ocean’s Eleven roots toward a Pierce Brosnan era James Bond adventure, complete with globe trotting locations, overblown villains, and spectacle driven chases. Like the earlier entries, it struggles under the weight of its own self importance, desperately needing at least ten minutes trimmed from its middle section. Each heist is followed by long flashback sequences that explain the tricks in detail, as if they were revolutionary, though most rely on the same mask gags seen many times in the Mission Impossible franchise.
The reverence for returning characters becomes laughable once Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) reappears with the same sense of grandeur as Andrew Garfield’s entrance in Spider Man: No Way Home, and the film overestimates how much we want to see these characters interact. Any momentum built in the first act vanishes during an extended interlude at Thaddeus’ mansion, where for nearly twenty minutes we watch characters banter while the plot moves in a glacial pace. Even Brian Tyler’s score feels overly serious, downplaying the addictive caper theme that once gave the series its identity (though it was always mixed far too loud) and leaning into a sense of self importance that has no place in this series.
For all this self importance, there is little at stake and almost no sense of danger or urgency. Pike tries her best to bring gravitas, chewing through every scene with a bad accent and exaggerated expressions. However, the script makes the mistake of showing her terrified during a phone call in her second scene, which makes it hard to take her seriously as a menacing foe afterward. Her henchmen barely register. The returning Horsemen are rusty and less effective, though there are mildly engaging moments between Eisenberg’s Atlas and Sessa’s Bosco, where the film has some fun contrasting millennial and Gen Z personalities. A fight scene inside Thaddeus’ mansion uses mirrors and a distorted perception room in clever ways, even if it is not as cool as it sounds. The cast overall is fine, with Harrelson, Eisenberg, Fisher, and Freeman bringing their usual charisma, while the new trio prove capable on their own. Dave Franco remains the weak link, his awkward delivery painfully cringy once again.
Things improve in the third act, easily the film’s strongest stretch. Real stakes finally emerge when the original Horseman is trapped inside a glass tank slowly filling with sand, forcing them to work together on a clever escape plan. The orchestration of the final heist and its editing are sharp and genuinely engaging. And finally, the film lands on a twist that, for once in this franchise, enhances what came before instead of collapsing the whole thing.
If the trailer made you curious about revisiting these characters and concepts, you will likely have a good time despite the laborious middle act. It feels far more cinematic than most heist films that go straight to streaming, and by concluding on a strong note, it leaves a decent aftertaste. To be fair, I had more fun with this than the ultra serious Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning earlier in the year. It may not be an elaborate trick, but there is still pleasure in watching it play out.