Four very diverse magicians get recruited to perform together. As a way of introducing the characters they are shown performing their respective acts. Daniel does a card trick, Merritt (the 'mentalist') hypnotizes a woman to extort money from her husband, Henley does an underwater escape act and Jack bends a spoon.
When they put on their show in Las Vegas they close it with 'something that was never done before'. They rob a bank. In Paris. This is how it is perceived by the audience: After they announce what they are about to do they recruit the assistance of a 'random' audience member, by people in the crowds draw balls indicating section, row and seat number. They want to rob this audience member's bank. They guy happens to be French and his bank is in Paris. They 'teleport' him into the bank vault and minutes later money rains from the ceiling. Very impressive.
And then it turns out that this particular bank actually was robbed in a way that it corresponds with all the details of the act. The case lands at the feet of FBI agent Dylan Rhodes and Interpol detective Alma Dray. They interrogate the 'Four Horsemen' (as they call themselves) but are being jerked around with little magic tricks and really cannot figure out how they did it. They were, after all, in Las Vegas with an entire audience as witnesses - including one Thaddeus Bradley, a former magician who now makes his money exposing the tricks of his former peers.
The FBI/Interpol duo, Bradley, and the sponsor of the Horsemen, Arthur Tressler, a insurance company honcho, all attend the next performance, this time in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras celebrations. Their final act this time around is also very elaborate and costs someone big money. They now rip off Mr. Tressler himself. His insurance company stifled many locals after hurricane Katrina and the nifty trick has all audience members write down their bank balance on a sheet of paper. Then Tressler is asked on stage and his balance is presented on a big board. Next, everyone is told that they are wrong about what they think they have in the bank and is asked to shine a light on their piece of paper to reveal the 'real' balance. Then a huge light shows Tressler's number lowered by a significant amount, which then appears on someone else's paper - and their bank account. As another chunck of Tressler's money disappears, it goes to someone else in the audience - and so on.
By now, it is clear that Tressler is not the guy who brought the group together. Rhodes and Dray are hot on their heals, Tressler hires Bradley to help him find them and they are being tracked with all high-tech equipment at the FBI's disposal but the nifty magicians get away and always seem to be one step ahead.
Dray meanwhile tells Rhodes of the mythical 'Eye' - a sort of secret society of brilliant magicians that only twice a decade accept new members. If this is more than a myth, the Horsemen set themselves up as viable candidates. There is also a story of a great magician, Lionel Shrike, who died because he wasn't able to escape a safe he locked himself into and had lowered into the Hudson River in New York City.
The big showdown, then, is in New York City. Law enforcement apparently tracked the Horsemen to an apartment where Rhodes and one of his colleagues only find Jack, who stayed behind to destroy blueprints. While his three cohorts are gone, Jack fights off Rhodes and flees in an FBI car. After a high speed drive, the car has a spectacular accident and - after Rhodes pries some papers out of the badly burned dead driver's hand the car blows up. The blueprint Rhodes recovered has the FBI follow a truck that supposedly transports a safe that the Horsemen are thought to have stolen. When they stop the truck, the lock gives way to a string of colorful tissues (a classic!) and the safe opens to hundreds of balloons (a classic!). A dead end.
The Horsemen's final performance is at 5 Pointz, where the agents rush to and fight their way through the audience only to always end up where the three remaining magicians are not. They once again pull off the stunt. However, they do not keep the money from the safe, which pops out (literally) of Bradley's car, making the FBI assume that Bradley was behind everything all along. When Rhodes visits him in his cell, Bradley tells him his theory of what happened in details only to then discover that Rhodes was actually behind everything.
The magician make their way to the carousel in Central Park, where Rhodes reveals himself to them and invites them to join the Eye. Later, he meets up once again with Inspector Dray and explains everything. Rhodes is Lionel Shrike's son and used this elaborate ruse to take revenge on everyone involved with his father's death.
I quite enjoyed this.
7/10
