The Prestige Christian Bale Michael Caine Hugh Jackman I heard about The Prestige when it first came out last year because comparisons to Edward Norton’s Illusionist were inevitable. It’s not that the films had the exact same plots; but there were similarities in that both dealt with magic and magicians. Plus, they were released within a month of each other, so it’s only natural that moviegoers would compare the two. I liked The Illusionist well enough, and was hoping for the same engrossing story from The Prestige. Did I get it? Read on to find out!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The movie opens with a voiceover from Cutter (played by Michael Caine), one of the main characters. It’s important to pay attention to what he says because the subsequent story more or less follows the exact pattern he describes. Every magic trick, Cutter intones, consists of three parts: The Pledge (where the magician shows you an ordinary object), The Turn (where the magician makes the object do something extraordinary — such as disappear), and The Prestige (where the magician brings the object back, fully intact). Viewers are then urged to watch closely.

We then get into the main plot, which essentially consists of two magicians, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) constantly trying to out-do each other throughout their careers. On the one hand, Borden is the superior magician in a technical sense. He’s creative with his tricks and can pull off all the difficult ones. On the other hand, Angier is the superior showman. He knows how to play the crowd, and he has the ability to make his act look good even if his illusions aren’t as slick as Borden’s.

Borden and Angier started off as apprentices together, but parted ways after an accident during an act led to the drowning death of Angier’s wife. Angier blamed Borden for tying a knot that was too difficult to slip, even after Cutter had warned him about it.

From that point forward, they’re sworn enemies and do their best to sabotage each other’s careers. They show up at each other’s acts in stupid disguises, inflict bodily harm on each other (Angier shoots Borden’s fingers off, Borden stabs Angier through the hands and causes him to break his leg badly), and, ultimately, try to kill each other.

I’ve made the plot sound pretty straightforward here, but the movie was directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento), so you know it’s not going to be that simple. There are numerous misdirections, a few surprises, and a big reveal (prestige) at the end that I won’t spoil for you. Plus, the story is told in overlapping flashbacks — apparently just to add to the confusion.

My Reaction: I liked this film, but I didn’t love it, as a lot of other viewers did. I just checked and The Prestige is currently #89 on IMDB.com’s Top 250. While the film did have its good points, there’s no way I would rate it that high! It seems that for everything I liked about the movie, there was something else that could have been done better, so I was left feeling a bit lukewarm about the whole thing at the end.

For example, I liked the premise here. Warring magicians trying to one-up each other at every turn had the potential to keep things very interesting. But I didn’t like the execution. The men wore juvenile disguises (false beards? Come on!) and did things that ought to have landed them in jail — yet we don’t see any sign of the authorities until Borden gets himself into that big mess.

I also liked the way the film set up for the prestige at the end. But I hated the way the reveal was done in a long, drawn-out expository scene. I can’t stand those types of scenes, where the two antagonists finally come face to face to explain every single detail, and of course one of them is dying — but he holds on long enough to tell/hear the full story before he finally dies. What a tired cliché!

I have to admit that while I was able to predict several of the “twists” that happened along the way, I had no idea what was coming at the end. The ending for this movie is somewhat controversial, but I’m going on record and saying that I liked it because it fit in with something that was said early on: the secret to most magic tricks is very simple and mundane, and once people know what that secret is, they cease to be amazed. That’s exactly how I felt at the end, and I’m sure that’s exactly the effect that Nolan was going for.

Overall, I give The Prestige 7.5 stars out of 10. It was pretty good, but it could have been great!