Now You See Me and Sisu sequels go to crazier lengths

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (PG13)

113 minutes, now showing
★★★☆☆

The story: After a nine-year disappearing act, or maybe they were just busy elsewhere, the Four Horsemen outlaw magicians resurface with a gang of next-gen aspirants to steal from the evil rich and redistribute the wealth.

The biggest sleight of hand of this Hollywood heist trilogy, which has grossed nearly US$721 million (S$939 million) globally to date despite lukewarm reviews, is in conjuring ever more preposterous plots.

Now You See Me (2013) introduced the Horsemen emptying banks during their stage shows: Jesse Eisenberg’s smug street magician J. Daniel Atlas is the ringleader of the quartet comprising Woody Harrelson’s mentalist, Isla Fisher’s escapist and Dave Franco’s card shark.

Atlas stopped rain in Now You See Me 2 (2016).

And in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t under director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 2009; Venom, 2018), he is tapped by the shadowy organisation The Eye to recruit three millennial illusionists (Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa and Ariana Greenblatt) and extract a mega diamond from a crime syndicate heiress with the villainous name Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike).

His now-disbanded cronies plus several other unexpected franchise returnees turn up to help as the anti-capitalist mission takes them from their New York base to Belgium, South Africa, the Arabian Desert, a Houdini death trap and a French chateau with an upside-down room.

Old grudges are compounded by intergenerational rivalries. Everyone competes to best the rest with a fantastical magic stunt, the mechanics of which are then explained in convoluted monologues.

Characters are hypnotised whenever the caper is out of ideas. All is an illusion, except the fun ensemble delighting in the spirited ridiculousness.

Hot take: This is a belated threequel nobody asked for and yet, it is surprisingly pleasing, having the pranksters back.

Sisu: Road To Revenge (M18)

90 minutes, opens on Nov 20
★★★★☆

The story: At the end of World War II, former Finnish Army commando Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) enters a Soviet Border Station to dismantle his family log cabin in the hope of rebuilding his life in unoccupied Finland. In pursuit is the Red Army commander Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang), who hacked up Aatami’s wife and children and is on a mission to finish him off too.

The Finnish production Sisu: Road To Revenge is a 120km road-rage chase across enemy territory.

The epic odyssey has six chapters, each madder than the last, and the one titled Motor Mayhem is mad like Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), as Igor leads the full force of the Soviet Army against Aatami in a cargo truck piled high with lumber for his new house.

What goons. Did they not see the 2022 sleeper hit Sisu, how Aatami singlehandedly razed 300 Nazis for stealing his gold? He is “the immortal”, and it is this heroic legend a KGB general (Richard Brake) wants Igor to demystify.

Writer-director Jalmari Helander and leading man Tommila reunite for a sequel that is all the more satisfying for introducing a proper nemesis along with a backstory. Both men are hardened warriors: Igor a sadist and Aatami stoic in his rage, grief and grit.

This is not a movie concerned with moral greys. It has barely any dialogue.

Its pure purpose is to choreograph the most ingeniously witty action violence ever, what with waves of motorcyclists, tanks, planes, bombs and a Molotov cocktail coming at Aatami.

He remains unstoppable, and will in return put to good use a missile on a locomotive.

Hot take: The carnage is literally dynamite.