If I’m honest, this one feels like watching a magic act from the lobby.
You can hear the applause, you can see the lights, but you’re missing the part where the trick actually lands. It’s chaotic, not in the fizzy, high-wire way the first film managed, but in the “too many moving parts and none of them locking into place” way.
It doesn’t help that the story feels smaller at the exact moment the cast feels bigger. Ruben Fleischer takes over the franchise and tries to tighten its focus after the maximalist sprawl of NYSM2, but the result here is oddly constrained—like a movie trying to whisper its way through a magic show. The premise has all the ingredients for a big, exuberant heist, yet the film seems uncertain about what it wants to be. Is this a generational handoff story, with the new trio stepping forward as heirs to the Eye? Or is it meant to be a reunion tour, the original Horsemen returning to reclaim the stage? The film never decides, and so we drift between those registers without the satisfaction of either.
The returning cast highlights this problem. Eisenberg and Harrelson seem game, but strangely disconnected from the emotional center—like they’ve been edited in from a neighboring movie. Isla Fisher’s return should feel triumphant, but she’s sidelined in favor of myth-building exposition. Lizzy Caplan once again steals the entire thing for me, injecting some desperately needed spark, but even she can’t disguise how thinly everyone is spread.
And the big issue remains the same from scene one to the final reveal: the story is a damned mess. You can feel the fingerprints of the four-plus screenwriters who cycled through this script. Everyone in the cast has the charisma to carry the glossy magic-heist material; the movie just never trusts them enough to slow down and let charm replace plot gymnastics.
What I miss most—and what the first film, even with all its silliness, understood—is the texture of real sleight of hand. There was a time when we could all pretend these actors had learned enough magic that what we saw on screen lived just close enough to reality to feel possible. I like watching Dave Franco throw cards. I like when a magic movie invites me to lean forward, not back.
But this third entry blows past all that. The illusions are mostly CG costume swaps and impossible maneuvers that sever any sense of physical plausibility. Even the “reveal” moments—like the diamond swap—play like digital storyboards. The movie proudly pulls back the curtain only to show you more curtain, more edits, more impossible architecture that no human team could manipulate in public. It’s spectacle without substance, and that makes it hard to stay connected to anything happening on screen.
And I want to stay connected. I’m an easy mark for these films. I love the idea of the Horsemen as a justice-minded magic troupe taking down corrupt institutions—this time a diamond empire with Nazi roots, which on paper should be delicious pulp. The Eye mythology is still goofy, but I’m willing to indulge it if the ride is fun.
But Fleischer’s direction and Stacey Schroeder’s editing never find the rhythm that made the first film a surprise hit. The glossy, neon palette from cinematographer George Richmond is nice to look at, but it can’t paper over the narrative confusion. Brian Tyler’s score tries its best to pump energy into the set-pieces, but even that familiar Horsemen motif feels like it’s searching for a movie that isn’t quite there. As a result, this is pretty handily the worst of the three—less exuberant than the original, less shamelessly silly than the second, but somehow more forgettable than both. And yet…and yet…I’m still putting a heart on it. Because I know I’ll watch it again. Because some part of me is always going to love a high-concept magic caper, even when the trick fizzles. Because guilty pleasures aren’t about quality—they’re about affection.
Two stars, heart on. My rational brain checked out early, but the part of me that loves card-throwing justice magicians just can’t quit this ridiculous franchise.