Confused thriller about two magician's rivalry in Victorian London.

Rating: 3/10 (8 March 2007)

There's only one way to say it: this is a bad movie! It uses a conventional form of interweaving the past and the present, starting with a pivotal event, the death of one magician with the other in attendance, and weaves back and forth, in and out, all the way through to the present.
Within this conventional structure we are supposed to be amazed by the magic, which is not particularly amazing, and we are almost always shown the techniques they use. Again, the magic in the film is mostly conventional.
The characters are the part of the movie that is not conventional, each one having enough neuroses and personality disorders to make them interesting, and rather humanly inconsistent, but also annoying and totally unbelievable. And I believe that all things that happen in movies have to appear credible, even the incredible events and plot twists. All of the ones in this movie seem terribly contrived.
With all the time they take for exposition (2 hours and 10 minutes!) they still have to hit you over the head with some of the plot points, and that is a sure sign of bad direction -- I won't spoil it by telling you where these are, they are so obvious that you will most likely be able to anticipate every surprise and be a bit bored as I was.
What kept me watching was the fabulous Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, and the beautiful sets and costumes of Victorian England.