Ten years is a long time in Hollywood, especially for a caper franchise fuelled by sleight-of-hand and swagger. Yet 'Now You See Me: Now You Don't', the long-delayed third entry in the illusion-powered heist saga, strolls back on stage with a grin, a deck of cards and a disarming willingness to lean into its own absurdity. 

What emerges is a feather-light, knowingly daft romp—more neon-soaked Vegas spectacle than elegant Ocean's-style precision—but nonetheless an enjoyable two hours of glittering, good-natured nonsense.

If Soderbergh's 'Ocean's Eleven' mourned the fading glamour of old Las Vegas, this series has always embraced the opposite: the city's gaudy, hyper-produced present. This instalment feels even closer to a modern residency—lavishly staged, wildly implausible and designed to dazzle rather than linger. Director Ruben Fleischer, a returning compatriot of 

Jesse Eisenberg from the Zombieland films, brings a glossy, frictionless energy: slick camera sweeps, weightless stuntwork and bombastic reveals that evaporate almost as soon as they appear. It's fun, yes—but it's also as fleeting as the smoke from a vanished dove.

The returning foursome—Daniel Atlas (Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher)—have long since gone their separate ways. 

'Now You See Me: Now You Don't' is exactly what it sets out to be: unpretentious entertainment with a mischievous grin. It neither deepens the mythology nor reinvents the formula. Instead, it offers a buoyant, contemporary update—aware of its own frivolity, delighted to embrace it, and eager to give audiences the cinematic equivalent of watching a skilled performer pull off a trick you know is impossible but enjoy anyway.

Their decade of absence is felt, but not laboured; the script briskly reassembles them when Atlas receives a tarot summons from The Eye, the secretive order that deploys illusionists as morally upright covert operatives. 

His mission leads him to a younger trio of rising talents: Bosco (Dominic Sessa), June (Ariana Greenblatt) and Charlie (Justice Smith), who have just pulled off a flashy Robin Hood-style digital heist against a sleazy tech bro using holograms and deepfakes of—naturally—the original Four Horsemen.

The next job is a crowd-pleaser: steal the world's largest diamond, "The Heart", from the icy, fabulously wealthy Veronika Vanderberg. Rosamund Pike, gloriously imperious in couture and clipped vowels, plays Veronika like a Bond villain who's attended a masterclass in froideur. 

She's an arms-trading, money-laundering industrialist with a taste for theatrical cruelty—exactly the sort of adversary a film like this requires. Her presence also bumps the film's star count up towards Ocean's Eleven territory, though without the same effortless interplay.

Indeed, interplay is where the film occasionally wobbles. Its attempts at generation-gap humour—Merritt baffled by youthful slang, the youngsters eye-rolling at analogue tricks—rarely land with the intended bite. 

Yet individually, the newcomers are uniformly charming. Greenblatt, in particular, gets a standout police-station brawl that showcases her mix of precision and cheek. The film treats its new magicians with the same breezy affection it grants the veterans, giving the ensemble a surprisingly cohesive rhythm.

Fleischer's direction, however, is content to float along the surface. Where Soderbergh might have smuggled slyness into the frames—the wink-and-nod acknowledgement of artifice—this film prefers elbow-jabs and enthusiastic backslapping. 

The big heist mechanics are dutifully explained, but the smaller, supposedly grounded tricks feel more superhero than sleight-of-hand. At one point the entire ensemble arrives at a safe house fully prepared for an impromptu magic-off, complete with elaborate props; the film waves away the logistics with a cheery shrug.

And yet, this refusal to take itself seriously is part of the charm. For all its overblown stunts and cartoon theatrics, the film taps into something sincere: the longing for a little wonder in an exhausted world. Jack Wilder spells it out bluntly—after the pandemic, after AI, after the endless digital churn, people still need magic. 

Not real sorcery, but that two-hour glide into a sparkly universe where physics bends, morality is simple and the performers genuinely seem to be having a blast.

Eisenberg remains the franchise's unexpected anchor. His Atlas is still a blend of arrogance and razor-quick cleverness, and he manages to deliver lines about "needing magic in troubled times" with enough straight-faced commitment to keep the film from floating away entirely. 

Harrelson, as ever, is a trickster delight, though the script gives him fewer standout gags this time. Fisher, returning after sitting out the second film, slides back into the ensemble with ease, while Franco continues to make Jack the most effortlessly appealing of the group.

The film also sprinkles in familiar figures: Lizzy Caplan's Lula bursts in with crackling comic timing, while Morgan Freeman's Thaddeus appears like a benevolent wizard dispensing cryptic counsel. And yes, the teased end-credits cameo—clearly intended to tee up a fourth outing—is likely to please long-term fans.

What the film lacks in narrative rigour, it partially compensates for with inventiveness in its set-pieces. The French castle escape, with its Ames room distortions and Escher-esque "Relativist" staircases, is a highlight—an exuberant blend of optical illusion and digital trickery that comes closest to capturing the wonder the franchise chases. 

Similarly, a globe-hopping mid-film montage whisks the Horsemen from France to Abu Dhabi in glittering, whiplash-quick sequences that prioritise spectacle over logic but deliver unambiguous fun.

Ultimately, 'Now You See Me: Now You Don't' is exactly what it sets out to be: unpretentious entertainment with a mischievous grin. It neither deepens the mythology nor reinvents the formula. Instead, it offers a buoyant, contemporary update—aware of its own frivolity, delighted to embrace it, and eager to give audiences the cinematic equivalent of watching a skilled performer pull off a trick you know is impossible but enjoy anyway.

It may vanish from memory the moment the lights come up, but perhaps that's the point. Not every illusion needs to last. Sometimes it's enough simply to be dazzled for a while—and this threequel, for all its flaws, delivers that sparkle with a flourish.