If you've seen one magician movie, you've seen 'em all

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2007)

This was a fine movie in some ways. The actors were excellent, especially Michael Caine. The action kept moving. The twists (and you know there are going to be twists in a movie about magicians) keep on coming.
However, the movie has a lot of flaws: The editing among all the different chronological sequences is confusing. I think the director intended us to be unsure of (for instance) who is reading whose diary when. It's not that hard to sort out where we are given a minute or so following every jump in time and space, but after a while it's annoying to think the director requires such tactics to keep us off balance.
The part played by Nicola Tesla is ridiculous. My jaw dropped toward the end of the movie after they asked us to accept such a preposterous piece of pseudo-history.
Scarlet Johanssen's accent is consistent, but how come it's the accent of an upper-class Englishwoman, when she's hanging out with these low-class magicians? At least it's better than David Bowie's accent. He is supposed to be Croatian but sounds like a stoned Scotsman.
The skimpy costumes worn by the magicians' assistants seemed too skimpy for Victorian times.
I guess I just don't like magician movies. They're always about revealing how tricks are really done, and, as someone says early on in the film, If you reveal the secret of the trick, you instantly lose the audience's respect. To compensate for that, they have to rise to a crescendo of revelations, and it's never enough compensation for me.