You don't really want to know the secret. You want to be fooled.

Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2007)

The Prestige is not a bad movie. Its luxurious cast consists of Hugh Jackman (X-men), Christian Bale (Equilibrium, Batman Begins), Sir Michael Caine (Children of Men), and most important of all, Scarlett Johansson (Lost in translation). It has plenty of twists and turns in its plot, and unravels secret after secret to keep you anxious about the truths till the end. Magicians went mad, scientist got crazy. Even without all these splendors, the Prestige is still good enough for its revealing all the gadgets and tricks about which conjurer had their mouse kept shut for centuries.
But I felt a fool when the final answer was given. I don't like being fooled so I'll drop my rating substantially for this movie. Had I been told that it was a fantasy movie, I would have accepted its alibi and left the cinema satisfactorily. Had I not been a graduate student who happened to pick the Mind Body problem for this quarter, I would have believed its explanations and stop questioning its logical validity. But the final part now looks so ridiculous that I feel obliged to use some paragraphs to reprove the stupidity that blemished all these clever tricks.
Firstly, and most obviously, if we are willing to assume that such a copy machine could exist, then unlimited profit could be made. Just copy wealth. What they used it for in the movie was so dumb that makes most of the second half hilarious.
Secondly, we forget about gold-copying fantasy and just focus on human duplication. Body duplication is quite straightforward biology and physics. It is the mind that is befuddling us. Actually this is a legitimate question of cognitive science, and quite some papers have been published about it. Basically there are two schools of theories. Egoism talks about self being a unique, continuous entity that does not necessarily depend on the physical existence. Such kind of self has an old alias, "soul". Soul is commonly described it as induplicatable. The logic is, if two souls claim one identity simultaneously, then it should be considered as one. Therefore, as soon as a mind is duplicated, they by definition will merge back into one. The bundle theorists disagree with the concept of a unique soul. These people held that in deed there is no self at all  all are just bits and pieces of various inputs, bundled together to give the body illusion of a self. In such cases, duplicated body entails different selves, and the consciousness could never be smoothly transferred before and after the duplication. In summary: no consciousness preserving mind duplication could exist.
Finally, if Fallon could behave that cruel to their family as depicted in the movie, then after getting jailed, why would he care about his daughter so much at all? Despite these logical flaws, the Prestige is still quite absorbing. Scarlett Johansson is so gorgeous that just her appearance in the movie worth the ticket. The first half is intense and reasonable in plot. The second part is  well, let me here quote the last line: "You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled." Yes, I hate the secret Chris Nolan gave up at the end.