Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As the illusions mount, they don't amount to much, leading up to a big finale that piles on the improbabilities and quietly sweeps them under the rug.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chu is more craftsman than poet, but the charismatic ensemble cast engages in the trickery with style.

Name : Mark Daniell / Alias : Toronto Sun
By the time we get to the London-based finale, the illusion the Horsemen pull off comes across as just completely implausible. It's almost as if the filmmakers were saying - didja get all that? Well, too bad.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
There's no arguing that there's a clever concept that anchors the "Now You See Me" franchise - expect more sequels - but razzle-dazzle and the art of misdirection can take you only so far.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
A madly spinning top of a movie, powered by an eagerness to please that somehow comes off as more innocent than calculated.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
The film is an emotional black hole, its insufferably smug tricksters augmented by Mr. Harrelson . as his character's identical twin. They never let us forget that their chief superpowers are glibness and ego.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
"Horsemen reappear in London; world holds its breath," blares a newspaper headline in this sequel, rather overestimating the world's fascination with magicians - as well as its recall of the first movie .

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Now You See Me 2" is a sequel that gets it right. It's as if everyone involved here analyzed what worked the first time around in 2013, and then decided to top it.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
For their next trick, they make a next trick sound like an attractive prospect.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
This is no mere haunted house movie. This is a tour through a giant, spring-loaded funhouse.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Based solely on merit, Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that should never have been made.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What it doesn't have is any kind of real magic.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie offers neither the astonishment of the magicians' artistry nor a dramatic view of how they do it.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The film is, at times, almost sinfully fun, assuming you have a taste for self-indulgently logic-free hedonism.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Just as cheerfully outlandish as the caper flick's precursor, with the acceptance of fancy tricks and misdirection twists dependent on an audience's love of a good hoodwink.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Try to remember this movie, a few days after seeing it, and you'll find that - like magic - it's disappeared.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Twice as preposterous and half as fun as the original.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's all about mystery and suspense, deceiving the audience in entertaining ways. It's much more enjoyable than the typical summer sequel du jour.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
And of course, there's no danger of mistaking computer-enhanced trickery for actual sleight of hand, so even the modest but honest pleasure provided by quality card work is compromised.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Pay no attention to the plot behind the curtain, Now You See Me 2 says, because it barely registers and hardly matters. Just go with it and watch two hours-poof!-disappear.

Name : Tomris Laffly / Alias : Time Out
Forget what trick-debunker Morgan Freeman says: You don't have to see this to believe it (or see it at all).

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Making a successful sequel is always a little bit like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But the only magic trick here is how slowly they've made two hours of our lives disappear.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Now You See Me 2 disappears with not a poof, but in a hyper-kinetic blur of hectic plot mechanics, ceaselessly nattering characters and so many ploys of misdirection that the film's own direction got lost up someone's sleeve long ago.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Now You See Me 2 gets giddy on its own unreality.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
My main problem with these movies is insufferably old-fashioned. With so much digital effects work guiding so many of the action scenes, the simple pleasures of sleight-of-hand are all but lost.

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
Why make a sequel? Well, why not: This one is more fun.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This longer, louder sequel to 2013's Now You See Me adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada." You wish the Horsemen would make you disappear.

Name : Lenika Cruz / Alias : The Atlantic
But very little about this hollow sequel to 2013's heist thriller Now You See Me feels mysterious; its biggest set-pieces will make viewers ask not "Whoa, how'd they do that?" but "Wait, huh?"

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
More than once, characters in "Now You See Me 2" make references to pulling back the curtain. And what's behind that curtain is just as much of an incomprehensible jab at the audience as everything else in this film.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
No less than in the glossy caper's 2013 predecessor, the plot rides a surging tide of ridiculousness and culminates in a pileup of unconvincing explanations.

Name : Bruce Diones / Alias : New Yorker
This first-person-shooter extravaganza has little purpose besides showing what happens when a GoPro is strapped to a series of stuntmen as they run through their repertoire of extraordinary action moves.

Name : Michael Ordona / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If one can accept the story's video-game logic and cope with the kinetosis, "Hardcore" is often exhilaratingly extreme.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It's all about the ride, the relentless wallop and whoosh. But, hey, sometimes that's all a cine-junkie needs for a fix.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
You could go see "Hardcore Henry" - or you could gulp down a pint of vodka, load in "Grand Theft Auto," then strap the TV to your face and throw yourself down the stairs.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
Their collective trip to hell is death tourism for the viewer; its sole, genuine feeling the one of relief that comes when it's over.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Hardcore Henry never aspires to rise above its one gimmick.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
For the first time ever, a movie has actually done it. "Hardcore Henry" has precisely replicated the experience of watching someone else play a video game.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
A great movie fools you into thinking it's really happening. By trying to make us a part of the film itself, Hardcore Henry just keeps reminding us it's not.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
For about 90 seconds, the novel first-person-shooter point of view hits our bodies with an unexpected flood of adrenaline, in a heart-pounding rush. Trouble is, the chemical high doesn't last.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
First-person POV quickly gets old as the bodies stack and the story loses steam.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Billed as the first-ever action movie filmed entirely from the hero's first-person viewpoint, Hardcore blasts along like a supercharged computer-game shoot-em-up, bursting with sick humor and splatterpunk violence.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Hardcore Henry doesn't just get under your skin, it gets behind your eyeballs and uses your head as its own cockpit. For hardcore thrills, Henry is your guy.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Too stuck in the swamp of empty machismo to be anything more than the feature equivalent of a soar-and-crash overdose.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A gonzo Russian action-flick shot entirely in first-person perspective. About as coherent as it sounds, but highly inventive and bloody great fun.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
I'm sure a lot of people will call Hardcore Henry "innovative" and "groundbreaking." And maybe it is. But it also feels more like a cool gimmick than a movie-and that gimmick gets old pretty fast.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Director Ilya Naishuller has said that he originally thought a 90-minute feature using the same technique was a bad idea, based on little more than a gimmick. It turns out he was right, but that won't matter to certain audiences.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Is it much of a movie? Not really. It's more of an experience - a passive sort of virtual reality - that uses a bare-bones narrative as a vehicle for a big-time body count.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
It is pummeling. It is punishing. It is nauseating and headache-inducing.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
The story exists mainly to provide reason and shape for the frenzy of carnage: constant, numbing, and in the film's view at least, occasionally funny.

Name : Dennis Harvey / Alias : Variety
Only the tiniest, most basic elements of character, backstory and even narrative are offered on the run in a movie whose 95% frantic-action composition has no need or breathing space for more.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Hardcore Henry is nauseating, twice over.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
The relentless action flick Hardcore Henry is totally nuts and a lot of fun for freaks.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
While its audacity is laudable, the film ultimately has all the thrill of watching someone else play a first-person-shooter video game.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
If action movies are meant to be stunning, Hardcore Henry can proudly take its place among the giants. Even better, it lets you stand with them.

Name : Glenn Kenny / Alias : New York Times
Its dour eccentricity gives Hardcore Henry a potency above and beyond that of standard-issue show-off action fare. That doesn't mean it's not still obnoxious, though.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
When the action is at its sharpest, such as with Henry's mid-chase leap from a detonating truck onto the back of a motorcycle, it's spectacular. Other times, it can be as wearying as generically hyper-edited Hollywood fare.

Name : Stephen Garrett / Alias : New York Observer
[Naishuller's] debut feature is a landmark of sorts, and a potent omen in this year of mass-marketed virtual reality.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
A dim beacon in the darkening night of action features, signaling a path to plot-free oblivion.