The Illusionist

Rating: 8/10 (7 October 2008)

Witchcraft, delusions, & spells instant images and ideas that might come up when hearing the word Illusionist but this also applies to the word Magician so the question that remains is: what is the difference between a Magician and an Illusionist? And why is the movie called so? A movie with extreme emotions blending love, passion, ambition, rage, envy, and despair together to build up a braided plot that is too twisted and intense involving two figures: The Illusionist Eisenheim (Edward Norton) & the Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell) with one common interest, Countess Van Tusken (Jessica Biel).
The opening scene strikes out where events are still unexplainable and faces are still not familiar until two sit on a table to talk an excellent rush that equips you with enough attention and excitement to know what this is all about and when will the movie reach the scene the it started with for those of you who have watched the movie I bet that you had few false alerts that this was the scene but it wasn't.
As always, Norton always embodies his character as if it's real or existed some time before, anyways lots of the tricks that you will see were his and not digitally performed. Apart from that, his fine performance was so emotional and expressive. Same goes for Biel who never had serious roles before and was proved talented after her first attempt which granted her a plenty of "Rising Star" awards.
On that very same year, something was going on with the adaptation of the theme "Magic" and the revival of famous magicians' names with no rational reason for this peculiar happening "The Illusionist" was one of them, which was the first and only hit for the undiscovered director Neil Burger, despite a low-profile movie "Interview With The Assassin" that collected two wins and four nominations but was poorly introduced to the audience.
It is undeniably some quality time to spend if you are interested in some romantic drama with a twist. If you enjoyed watching "The Prestige" which hit the screens on the same year then you would definitely love to watch this one.