Jesse Eisenberg's 112-Minute Heist Movie Is Prime Video's Biggest Hit

Ruben Fleisher's 2025 movie "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is now on Prime Video, and, perhaps startlingly, it's currently the most popular film on the service.

Louis Leterrier's "Now You See Me" was released in 2013, and it boasted a great cast and a novel premise. Jessie Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco played a quartet of professional magicians who, thanks to a mysterious benefactor, are recruited to become professional thieves. Early in the film, they seem to magically empty a Parisian bank vault and shower a theater audience with cash. The cop on the case is played by Mark Ruffalo, and he teams up with a French Interpol agent played by Mélanie Laurent. Morgan Freeman plays a magician who profits from revealing other magicians' secrets, and Michael Caine played the aforementioned mysterious benefactor. 

"Now You See Me" is fluffy, matinee entertainment, not particularly slick or profound, but undeniably entertaining. It made over $351 million at the box office, leading to Jon M. Chu's "Now You See Me 2" in 2016. Isla Fisher bowed out of the sequel (she was pregnant at the time), replaced by a new character played by Lizzy Caplan, but Eisenberg, Harrelson, Franco, Ruffalo, Freeman, and Caine all returned. Daniel Radcliffe and Sanaa Lathan also joined the cast. That film was also a hit. The story involves ... you know what? I don't remember the story. I just remember having a lot of fun. 

So, naturally, a third film was made, finally completing the famous phrase with "Now You See Me: Now You Don't." And the gang is all back (sans Michael Caine), including both Fisher and Caplan, as well as newcomers Justice Smith and Dominic Sessa. Rosamund Pike plays the movie's villain, the head of a South African diamond mining operation. 

It should be noted that "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" also dominated the box office, making over $246 million. That's not quite as good as its predecessors, but it's nothing to sneeze at. It's always fun to see these charming magicians back on their game, exploiting their talents. The Eisenberg character, for instance, named J. Daniel Atlas, is the leader of the crew. Harrleson plays Merritt, a mentalist and hypnotist. Fisher plays Henley, an expert in escapes, while Franco plays the card shark and prestidigitator. There's an amusing scene in the first film wherein he accurately flings playing cards at the Ruffalo character during an escape. 

The plot of "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is lightweight hooey. It begins with a trio of younger magicians (played by Smith, Sessa, and Ariana Greenblatt) impersonating our beloved heroes via deepfakes. This causes the real versions to emerge from the shadows after a decade, when they're recruited into a diamond heist scheme involving the wicked industrialist Veronika Vanderberg (Pike). There is a shadowy, Illuminati-like organization pulling the strings, of course, called the Eye. The main four magicians are nicknamed the Horsemen, and they receive a lot of oblique instructions from the Eye. (The movie actually fixes a major problem from the second film.)

Like in the first two movies, "Now You Don't" climaxes with a confrontation that isn't what anyone first assumes. The gimmick of these movies is that magicians can stage just about any illusion you can imagine, and that those skills, if plied correctly, could serve as a dandy way to steal money from corrupt billionaires. All three "Now You See Me" movies are the pure definition of Hollywood escapism.

The biggest gripe any fans might have about "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is merely the title. The second film should have been called "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" (or perhaps just "...Now You Don't"), while the third film — and this is obvious — should have been called "Now You 3 Me." 

As one might predict, "Now You Don't" racked up a barely-fresh approval rating of 61% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 148 reviews. There were some very positive reviews and some very negative ones, but most seemed to fall somewhere on the matrix of "Eh, it's fine." Robbie Collin, writing for The Telegraph, penned one of the more negative reviews, giving the film one star out of five and noting that the main characters were actually kind of annoying. "Wouldn't 'Ocean's Eleven' have been vastly improved," he wrote, "if its heroes weren't suave gentlemen thieves, but the smuggest twerps on the planet?" William Bibbiani, writing for The Wrap, fell somewhere in the middle, succinctly describing the film's ephemeral pleasures. He wrote: 

"'Now You See Me: Now You Don't' is merely an excuse to let the actors bounce off each other and do ridiculous illusions that have to be explained in flashback, which doesn't always make sense either. It's a magic act without the storytelling, so every moment is the prestige, and none of it feels prestigious. It's goofy and shallow and delightful, and in a couple days I'll forget I ever saw it."

From the sound of it, "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is exceptionally average, but it's dazzling enough to attract a mass audience on streaming. It wouldn't surprise me if "Now You 4 Me" is eventually made.