Get Carter

Rating: 8/10 (19 November 2006)

Those who read and enjoyed the novel Carter The Great will be predisposed to enjoy the prestige. I hesitate to employ the phrase 'rip-off' but no one writes in a vacuum and the similarities between the novel and the film are akin to those that would obtain at a convention of Siamese Twins. Both are 'period' works, Carter is set roughly eighty years ago, Prestige roughly one hundred; both revolve around rival magicians - or 'illusionists' - a rivalry so intense that even murder is countenanced; in both novel and film a magician loses a wife (in the film, as if anxious to avoid rip-off claims, each magician loses a wife, albeit the second one is a suicide). For that matter we could also be in David Mamet country, specifically the Mamet of The Spanish Prisoner. These cavils to one side The Prestige does entertain with solid performances - even the ubiquitous and over-hyped Scarlett Johannson turns in a half-decent performance and is certainly worth two hours of anyone's time.