Well crafted movie.

Rating: 10/10 (2 March 2007)

Watching this movie was almost like I was watching an old 30s or 40s B&W movie. The acting was superb, story well told, and it really felt truly like a period piece. Writer/Director Neil Burger makes a movie here that is truly a masterpiece, and the producers from the Yari co. (Crash and Sideways) show that they produce movies of good quality. No. Make it great quality.
Here we see Edward Norton playing Eisenheim the Illusionist. A magician whom people crowd into theaters just to watch him. He learns his tricks from an old traveling magician whom he meets one day when he was in his teens. He uses these tricks in the street where he meets the duchess Sophie (Biel) and the two fall into a forbidden love. They are soon separated and never see each other again for a long time. Eisenheim travels around the world and grows up using his tricks to gain money to help the poor. In one performance in which the Crown Prince Leopold (the vicious Rufus Sewell) attends. In one trick he asks for a volunteer. A woman comes up and stuns Eisenheim's eyes to see it is Sophie. He finds out that she is to marry Leopold and the two fall in a forbidden love again while Leopold becomes obsessed with making Eisenheim a fraud to the people and charges Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) to find and expose the truth.
The Illusionist is a well directed and filmed movie that is surely one of the best films of 2006. This is one of those sleeper hits.
10/10