The film starts with an establishing shot of a dark room in a flat. The darkness created a mystery, and there is non-diegetic sound used in the form of a voice over, which is the voice of the man whom we see standing in front of the mirror with his eyes closed, about to do a card trick. As he has his eyes closed, it shows the audience that he has done this before and he knows what he is doing, so we expect the trick to be good and to shock us. As the voice utters "Closer.....come closer", the camera moves in towards the character, which makes the audience feel as if they are there and they are involved. The man in the room is central, which makes him the focal point of the entire scene. The non-diegetic music playing throughout the opening scenes builds the tension as the tricks are being shown to the audience, and then the tempo crescendos as the trick is revealed.
The next scene opens with an establishing shot of Chicago:
We then see the character we saw in the flat, playing a card game with a women with a crowd of people surrounding him. The fact that he is playing a card game could suggest that, later in the film when they turn to theft, they think crime is just a game to them. The position of the camera makes it look like the character is showing the cards to the audience and not the character behind the camera. This gets the audience involved and as if they have a part to play in the film.
The character throws the cards up in the air after asking if her card was in the pack, and when she said no, her card appeared on the side of the building in lights. The large-scale trick sets the plot for the rest of the film.
We then see a hooded figure stood in amongst the crowd; this creates a mysterious atmosphere and makes the audience want to keep watching to find out who he/she is. This character appears in each of the 4 scenes which introduces the main characters, so we know that there is something connecting them all.
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