This movie has the pledge, the turn and the prestige

Rating: 10/10 (29 October 2006)

This is a movie about two rival illusionists, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), who try to outdo each other's tricks and prove to be the better one. And while they are trying to learn the secrets of each others' tricks, they also sabotage each other's shows. One day, Alfred invents a trick that seems to deny the laws of physics (but after all, this is magic and all magic tricks seem to deny the laws of physics). Robert sets his mind to figuring out Alfred's trick and improving it so he can come out as the better magician. His journey to understanding Alfred's trick takes Robert to the US where he meets a scientist who seems to have found a way to manipulate electrical energy at a whole new level. He invests his money in a machine that can perform real magic (something all illusionists claim to do but only wizards can do).
The movie begins with Alfred being accused of murdering Robert (while Robert was performing his magic with that electrical machine) and sentenced to death penalty. Since they are known to have sabotaged each other's shows, people take this to be one of those incidents that just ended up deadly for Robert. As Alfred is in jail, he gets Robert's journal and begins reading it. From this moment on, the movie moves backward in time and we get to see how the feud between the two magicians initially began and the events leading up to the Robert's death. The movie doesn't follow a straight time line and can be a little confusing at times. With Alfred's reading Robert's journal in where Robert speaks of reading Alfred's notes, sometimes it is hard to know where we are at the story.
Overall, I think the Prestige is a pretty good movie and I must add that it owes much of its success to directing skills of Christopher Nolan. The way he tells the story piece by piece as he pulls them from different places and times can easily go wrong but he is very good at doing that. I also liked the unknown element in the movie. There were some simple explanations to the seemingly magical tricks and there were also some unknown, sci-fi elements.