Now here’s a twist on the true crime genre: the solution to a 525-year-old murder mystery hidden in the art on a deck of cards. That’s what world-champ magician Shawn Farquhar believes, at least. In Lost in the Shuffle, documentarian Jon Ornoy follows Farquhar simultaneously investigating his theory and creating an elaborate card trick based on the crime.
The cold case at hand (as it were) involves the suspicious death of France’s King Charles VIII, perhaps killed by his queen, Anne of Brittany. Farquhar’s quest takes him to Belgium, Britain and beyond, with the occasional and fully intentional tangent into magic theory.
Ornoy and his globetrotting star almost magically transform deep-niche nerd shit into an engaging detective story, with wonderful animated segments subbing for reenactments. Although not as Da Vinci Code-y as initially set up, their symbol-conspiratorial Shuffle holds appeal to history geeks, homicide geeks, game geeks, travel geeks, sleight-of-hand geeks and even just process geeks.
To whichever group(s) among those you belong — and even if you find Farquhar’s ultimate assertion to be a mighty leap of assumption — you’ll probably fall into the movie’s net. —Rod Lott