Predictable, bland and depressing: Nolan's first failure

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2006)

The Prestige is nominally a story of two magicians whose competition and obsession crushes them.
The problem is that it never properly works. Told in stacked flashbacks (one reads the diary of the other and flashes back, but within that flashback there are further flashbacks), and with the heavy use of narration, the film seems unusually clumsy. It lacks everything other Nolan films had: Memento had at its core a very simple device which made a very interesting film (the long term memory loss). Following had a simple but effective premise. Insomnia, as film noir filmed entirely in daylight, had a similarly simple subversion at its centre. But The Prestige forgets the elegance if a simple, uniform device, and instead becomes a complicated, but ineffective movie.
For example, this is not merely the story of competitive drive among magicians. Fairly early on in the film, one causes the death of the other's wife - which sets off their ever escalating vendetta. Even that story would be more interesting if it weren't for the time-nonlinearity and stacked flashbacks. These gimmicks are supposed to add suspense to the film, but end up ruining it. Finally, the film uses plot twists and revelations throughout - perhaps in line with a film about stage deceivers - but, disappointingly, none of the twists are surprising. Too many hints are interspersed throughout the film, and Michael Caine's speech about the importance of the third act and the titular prestige more or less announces how the film will end.
The botched attempts at twists in the tale, the dislikeable characters, the somewhat bland look of the film, and the terrible seriousness with which the film approaches a subject that should really be driven by a sense of mischievous amusement results in a whole that is predictable, bland and depressing. By far the biggest disappointment of the year so far.