Gorgeous looking, criminally dreadful plot

Rating: 4/10 (22 March 2007)

This movie was sadly a disappointment. Spoilers ahoy! This movie set itself up as mystery, so much so, that I set out to solve it. Unfortunately I solved the "surprise" the moment it purportedly appeared.
Never in a movie has the solution been so signposted, signalled, foreshadowed, and hinted at. I could have forgiven this obvious defect had it comprised some wit. Yet it was a weak twist. Worse, the happy ending of the movie depended on incurring the death of a villain who was more of an intellectual than a loathsome evil-doer. We are told he beats up women, yet we are never shown him as anything except a rather interesting chap with a bit of a temper. The villains demise was nothing short of a cold and calculating murder of an innocent man by proxy by the "hero" in effect. And the hero himself was devoid of much character. He gives some coins to some kids, so that we cheer him on as a fine fellow in a mindless ploy to get us to like him.
Through the movie, I consistently liked the villain, and grew to despise the magician. Such a waste! And the impossible tricks he performed were unexplained. Projection was patently impossible. Those images were holograms, how did he do that, I am still baffled! How did that sword trick operate? If it were supernatural, then the plot fails, for he could just magic his way out of trouble.
The Prestige, an infinitely better written and executed movie, SPOILER ahead - did cheat, but this cheating was carefully sandboxed and was used to great effect, they pulled it off. But here the cheating is not acknowledged nor explained.
Shame, I really was expecting to like this movie.