Are You Watching Closely? Abracadabra!

Rating: 8/10 (6 May 2017)

If you have seen other films of Nolan you may be used to his special way of doing movies (with complex plots, some twists and a special way of filming, capturing the essence of the movie and the story perfectly). But if you're new in his filmography, you must watch this movie without missing any detail and trying to figure out any possible ending you feel could be in here, so the movie, at the end won't hit you in the face that much.
The Prestige tells us the story of two magicians and their story of rivalry, how they fight with each other to get the magic tricks of the other and also tells the story of revenge of one of them, Robert Aniger (Hugh Jackman), after the other magician, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) kills his wife in an accident during a magic show. The movie starts with Robert Angiers doing a magic trick and apparently dying trapped in a water tank, and after that Alfred Borden is accused of killing and is put into the jail. Here he receives the diary of Robert and from here the story moves backward and forward to tell us the beginning of their rivalry, the discoveries of each other and how they try to steal the magic trick from the other.
The last half hour of this movie is portrayed in such an amazing way that will keep you staring at the screen and wondering what is happening. For this amazing finale, you have two amazing actors, Hugh Jackman as Robert Angiers & Christian Bale as Alfred Borden, both creating superb performances, both going crazy to get the tricks of the other and both having such an emotional part at the end of the movie. Also, they're helped by one of Nolan most frequent collaborations, the legendary Michael Caine in the role of Cutter, one of the managers of Robert Angiers. Also I have to do a special mention to Scarlett Johansson as Olivia, Rebecca Hall as Sarah, David Bowie as Tesla and Andy Serkis as Alley. They all did a great job in the supporting roles and they add a lot to the story and the movie in general.
One of the few negative things I have to say about this movie are for example, that at times it felt too long, because there were some parts were nothing was happening, they were just talking without any development on the story. Also, some of the secondary characters I have mentioned before, like Olivia, Tesla or Alley (I'm not talking about the actors. It's about the character itself) were underused with actors like Scarlett Johansson, Andy Serkis or David Bowie, and at the end they just disappear and you don't get to know anything about them.
Other great thing of the movie is, as always, the amazing camera work Nolan uses in here, capturing the feeling of menace, rage, darkness and so on along the entire movie. He really captures the feelings of the story and transmits them to you. Especially in the final half hour of the movie, when you slowly discover the reality, he captures the feelings and keeps you in tension until the end. All of this is accompanied by a great score by David Julyan, which don't have any musical climax, but is a great atmospheric score that helps the movie to develop well.
Overall I recommend this movie to any fan of Nolan and to who want to be surprised by a great and not much known movie.
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.