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“Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called “The Pledge”; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you’re looking for the secret… you won’t find it, that’s why there’s a third act called, “The Prestige”; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.” explains Harry Cutter (Michael Caine), the illusion engineer.
And “The Prestige” is what the most important thing in the lives of Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), two young magicians at the begin of their career. They are friends, until Julia Angier (Piper Perabo) dies during a stage performance, and Angier suspects it’s Borden’s fault.
From then on, they are rivals and enemies, and while Angier is the better showman, Borden is the better magician who invents an incredible trick - The Transported Man - where he seems to teleport from one end of the stage to the other. And neither Angier nor Cutter - now working with Angier - are able to figure out how Borden does it. Angier demands from his new assistant and lover Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson) to work for Borden and to steal the trick.
Both men are so obsessed with being the better magician they do everything for it - trying to steal each other’s secrets and sabotaging each other’s performances to the extent of crippling each other.
But that’s what we learn from backflashes - in the present, Borden is trialed and sentenced to death for murdering Angier …

In a world where everything is an illusion and men are obsessed with being the best illusionist, Christopher Nolan (Memento , Insomnia , Batman Begins) creates a world where you can’t believe your eyes and where obsession will drive two men to do everything to be on top.
Hugh Jackman is an aristocrat who sacrificed his name to become a magician because his noble family doesn’t want to have anything to do with such an ordinary craft, but he is still a nobleman who doesn’t want to get his hands dirty … until obsession drives him to get more dirt on his hands as he could ever have imagined.
Christian Bale on the other hand is not shy to dirty his fingers - he’s from the lowest class and driven from the same obsession, and willing to sacrifice anything - and everybody - for his obsession as well.
“Are you watching closely?” Bale’s character asks several times - and if you watch closely, you will see two fine actors delivering great performances (while the female roles are really just supporting roles) - and maybe, just maybe, you might be able to see through Nolan’s fogs of illusion that hide the great finale - the “Prestige”.
And while the setup is complex (flashbacks, flashbacks within flashbacks, reading from a journal about reading from another journal), it’s never too complicated and should be comprehensible for everybody.
Suspend your disbelief, submerge into a world of illusion and magic and enjoy the “Prestige” of an awesome movie - and don’t tell your friends who didn’t see the film yet!

In a world of illusion and duplicity, there are two critics at work as well.
And while the one is satisfied with Christopher Nolan’s adaption of Christopher Priest’s novel The Prestige, the other one is captivated by the acting, the story and the way it’s told as well - but it’s all ruined with the fancy, unbelievable, even ridiculous solution. If you are not willing to suspend your disbelief completely, you will be fine with the “Pledge” and the “Turn”, but the “Prestige” of the movie is a total failure.

The Prestige Trailer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under 4-star-movies, 2-star-movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.