Film review: The Prestige

These days even your average Joe Magician on America's Got Talent can whisk behind a contraption and pop up behind you four seconds later. Sure, we "ooh" and "ah" (or squeal if we're Brandy) but secretly we're so prepped by "magic revealed" specials that nothing short of a resurrection could impress us.

It's this loss of mystique that The Prestige laments and attempts to revitalize with enigmatic voiceovers and brooding landscapes. We're offered a world where the ambitious pursuit of illusion becomes a matter of life and death. Although the film edges toward melodrama in raising the stakes, the mystery unravels with enough twists and turns to satisfy even the most stilted audience.

We begin at the end-a sure sign that we're in Christopher Nolan territory. And as in Memento, the characters are propelled backwards in their search to dislodge the chimerical from the actual.

Nolan seems to have found a muse in Christian Bale, who plays the prideful but talented magician Alfred Borden. Hugh Jackman, a newcomer to the director's cast, lends his dapper flair to Robert Angier, Borden's smartly dressed archrival. The rest of the cast is composed of a strange combination of the beautiful (Scarlett Johansson as a stage helper) and the bizarre (David Bowie and Andy Serkis-a.k.a. Gollum-as mad scientist and assistant, respectively).

The antagonism between the two magicians materializes on the stage, with each attempting to one-up the other with the latest illusion. Angier's desire for vengeance is spawned by the accidental death of his wife, which we are led to believe is caused by Borden. However, Angier's vengeance morphs into a consuming obsession with one of Borden's tricks, the Transported Man.

Although the film offers a backstage view of each act, we're caught in a sort of dazed wonder at the events that transpire before our very eyes. We bounce back and forth through time against the murmuring narration of alternating characters, and it's not long before mystery turns to mystification.

Yet this doesn't prevent plot twists from being a bit too fantastic and characters from being a bit too one-dimensional. At times, the film lapses into hokey sleight of hand, where all it takes to fool the world is a stick-on beard and glasses. The end is not so much shocking as it is gratifying to the astute viewer. In its effort to mystify and amaze, The Prestige nearly spoils the final trick.

Every magic act is divided into three parts-the pledge, the turn and the prestige-with the prestige as the final act of undecipherable magic. Nolan attempts to mimic this cyclical process in his film, but falls just short of accomplishing the impossible. Still, he shapes his story with an indisputable flair for the dramatic, and if anything, it is the film's showmanship that will win over the crowd.