A Thinking Man's Pot-Boiler

Rating: 7/10 (19 September 2006)

"The Illusionist" is a nifty but rather strange film. It's a mystery whose central mystery, once revealed, isn't all that mysterious, yet the film manages to build an exciting amount of suspense anyway.
It's success, I think, lies in the fact that it builds a great deal of character development and character-driven subplots into the film, so that not everything hinges on how tricky you find the ending to be. As Paul Giamatti's police inspector character begins to connect the pieces of the puzzle in the film's climactic moments, it's more fun to watch his face responding to the trick than it is to see how the trick was pulled off in the first place.
Edward Norton, as usual, does a fine job as master magician Eisenheim, who meets his long-lost childhood love (Jessica Biel) ten years after they were parted and told they could never be together, due to class differences. From there, it's up to Eisenheim to pull off his most elaborate illusion yet, and make them "disappear," as his young love asks him to do early in the film. But where does reality end and illusion begin? The film plays with that question in what is mostly pot-boiler fashion while giving it just enough intellectual trimmings (talk about the soul, etc.) to satisfy those who want a little meat with their thrillers.
And Philip Glass provides a musical score that sounds for all the world like the one he composed for "The Hours," though what worked so well for that movie feels less suited for the material here.
Grade: B+