Film
The Four Horsemen resurface. Now forcibly recruited by a tech genius to pull off an impossible heist, their biggest to date. It has been a year now since they outwitted the FBI and won over the public.
Now You See Me 2 is an engrossing film. It is fun, with action, mis-direction, a plot that will leave the viewer guessing as it twists and turns.
The film features a highly talented ensemble cast: Jesse Eisenberg (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, American Ultra), Mark Ruffalo (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Now You See Me), Woody Harrelson (Triple 9, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) , Dave Franco (22 Jump Street, The Lego Movie), Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Sanaa Lathan, Michael Caine (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Interstellar) and Morgan Freeman (Lucy, Transcendence). With names like these, and their filmographies, there is talent abound.
As for rewatch value of the film, although subsequent views would not have the allure of all the plot twists, there are many subtleties to the story that are easily missed in an initial viewing, making it well worth seeing again. Read the full review of Now You See Me 2 here.
Disc
Technically, the disc is a huge disappointment. There are some artefacts in the video in some scenes, most likely from the compression process. And the missing bonus features that are listed on the DVD box.
The main feature is great, but let down by a poor quality disc.
Now You See Me 2 is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
The disc is encoded at a high average bitrate, however in several scenes (most notably those with blue stage lighting) there are compression artefacts visible on screen. Colours do also appear washed out.
It would not be recommended to scale this up to a larger or higher resolution screen, as this would merely serve to exacerbate the lower quality visuals.
Audio
There is a choice of two audio soundtracks, namely a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, and a 2.0 stereo downmix.
In the 5.1 track, dialogue is clear via the centre speaker. Surround channels are used to great effect in many scenes to expand the on-screen action, and further draw the viewer in to the story.
Navigation
From the start, the disc dazzles with flashy menus, with video backgrounds taken from some clips in the main film. These are non-spoilers. There is a music accompaniment for the menus.
Navigation is simple though, and easy to follow, with choices to play the movie, a sub-menu for selecting between Dolby Surround or Dolby Stereo and another sub-menu for scene selection. Scenes are chosen from small still image thumbnails, with neither a chapter number or description (unless a faint number in the thumbnail counts). The thumbnails are in black and white, with ten per sub-menu screen, making it rather difficult to pick a specific chapter in the film.
Selecting the audio menu on your DVD software or set-top box will take you to the audio setup menu, but there is no option to resume the film, and it starts from the beginning again.
Bonus Features
The DVD box states that there are two bonus features. An audio commentary by director Jon M. Chu, and a feature “You Can’t Look Away”, however neither of these are accessible on the disc, and likely not present.