Which element interests me the least:
– Hayden Christiansen, the wooden guy who forever ruined Darth Vader
– Djimon Hounsou, the once-promising actor who feels like he’s on the verge of appearing in SciFi Channel movies for a sandwich
– Mimi Lederer, the once-barely-interesting director who brought us Pay It Forward and The Peacemaker, the film that almost still-birthed George Clooney’s career
– Mandrake The Magician, an old pulp character about whom people can’t even find the enthusiasm to be ironic.
What a convergence of mediocrity, all coming together on to a movie that I can’t wait to not see. And I haven’t even given you all of the mediocrity that is combining to make Mandrake the Magician. For instance, it’s being written by the guys who did Sahara (the most generically mediocre movie I may have ever seen) and Sound of Thunder!
This version of Mandrake has been turned into a sort of Criss Angel/David Blaine, which means you will spend the whole film begging for him to die. Coming Soon has broken this press release story, so let’s allow them the honor of being cut and pasted from – so disorienting for they who are usually doing the cutting and pasting!
In the film, Jackson Mandrake lives life on the edge. Working as an underground magician and escapologist, his act has grown increasingly dangerous. Following a daring escape from an SUV that has been dropped out of an plane at the Burning Man Festival*, he is coerced by the CIA into breaking a deep-cover agent named Xi Shing Lung out of a maximum security jail. Hypnosis, contortion, distraction and technical wizardry all come into play as Mandrake breaks the agent out from the inside within a 24-hour deadline.
But back on the outside, Mandrake learns that it was all a set-up. Xi is a CIA agent gone bad. He offers Mandrake the chance to join his crime ring. When Mandrake refuses, he’s a marked man. He must escape his would-be-killers and also the real CIA who accuse him of being in league with Xi. His quest to clear his name leads him into all sorts of dangers, which he must overcome with daredevil escapes that require all his conjuring skills. And along the way, Mandrake is forced to confront his past and the girl he left behind…
Sounds like they should call it Mandrake the Moron.
* HAHAHAHAHAHHA