Director lacks the magician character's command of illusion.

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2007)

This movie is pretentious. It's really light-weight romance/mystery, dressed up in some beautiful clothing: sets, cinematography, and wonderful score by Philip Glass.
My chief complaints are: Edward Norton is not convincing as a supreme master of illusion.
The Crown prince is a cartoon character.
The story is not convincing. It depends on the audience knowing practically nothing about European history or customs. There are huge holes in the final plot illusion. (No spoilers here.) The concept is weak: a potentially interesting historical time and place are only dragged in for exotic interest, not for any intrinsic reason, there's no great emotional truth involved. The movie doesn't deliver on the significant drama it hints at.
My chief grudge is that I have seen two *truly great* movies about illusionists setting who come into terrifying conflict with power, in Hitler's Germany: Hanussen(1988),and Mephisto(1981),both by the Hungarian director István Szabó. Both movies were beautify, breathtaking, heavily weighted with fate and great events, and important things to say about the role of the artist. This movie seems like a cheap knockoff by comparison.
(Szabó made another impressive movie, Colonel Redl / Oberst Redl (1985), about a working class boy whose rising military career in the Austro-Hungarian Empire is wrecked on the reef of the aristocratic establishment. The Illusionist seems to have drawn some important elements from it.)
It's too bad the director didn't take as many pains over his movie illusions as the magician in the story. I hate it when I can see all the strings.