Movie Review: "The Prestige" (2006)

Chistopher Nolan's interesting style is always a treat for me. In The Prestige,he noticeably goes back home to his Batman Begins frame of mind in terms of visual style. The dark brooding atmosphere accentuates the darkness of the times they were in. He also goes home to his Memento days with his trademark non-linear storytelling style.

Two rival magicians Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale)outwit each other by sabotaging each other's shows and stealing each other's secrets. Eventually this rivalry had very innocent roots as that they were former calleagues with dreams of making it big as the best magician in England.
In this charade of one-upping each other Angier decides to do some further research by retiring for a couble of years to visit the famed scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) who Angiers reputes to have assisted Borden with his act. The obsessive Tesla creates the machine that Angiers funds him to build for his act not knowing what dangers lay ahead for him. All this sacrifice, all this effort to be the greatest magician ever.



The movie has it's strong points as well as weak ones. The best part of the movie is the way the one-upping of each magician is so brilliantly paced by the non-linear storytelling. You can hardly tell up to the very end who will one-up who. Who was smarter than the other. Who, in the end will prevail.

David Bowie as Nikola Tesla is awesome. His charisma in this role is unprecedented since his role in Labyrinth, I was a kid when I saw that and I can still remember him as the wizard with the cool crystal balls. His entrance in one of the scenes one of the coolest I've seen in a long time. From the darkness, he walks across a platform to appear in the fore ground while bolts of electricity from his large electromagnet streak across his body from above into the floor.



One of the weak points is kind of a spoiler, so I'll skip that. The film kind of feels akin to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Oldboy (notice I compare almost everyhting to Oldboy). Michael Caine just breezed throug this movie like a belch, by the way Scarlett Johannsen was weak in this movie. She contributed almost nothing to the plot. I would have preferred seeing more of Piper Perabo.

Anyway's, it's a good film to watch, just watch it with a smarter person, or someone who won't bug you with questions while easily getting lost in the story.

Rocketboy's Rating: **** (4 out of 5 stars)