downright disappointing

Rating: 3/10 (20 January 2007)

I was so eager to watch the film when it came out, mainly because of Edward Norton, but sadly, it turned out to be really disappointing.
As usual, Edward Norton gave a fabulous performance but that's the most credit i could give to this film. Jessica Biel's character was just so plain, with no substance to it. Paul Giamatti did a good job as a police inspector who's downright annoying, but it was hard to see what his character's intentions were. Rufus Sewell, as the Crown Prince, failed to bring the evil-ness or mean-ness out of his character. It seems that the director has no idea whether to make him seem evil or pathetic. The cast was beautiful but the characters' development in the film was so little that they leave no deep impressions.
The development of the plot was just so slow and sometimes it was hard to see where the director was going with the plot. The magic tricks/illusions done were uninteresting and somehow to me, the whole illusion of the dead made no sense or meaning to the film or story.
I hated the ending of the film. It was just so lazily done, with all the flashback montages to explain the whole film. A great twist, no doubt, but the director did no justice to the twist at all.