Crap Covered Pretzel with Sweet Glaze

Rating: 4/10 (27 November 2006)

I'm going to go ahead and tell you right now that you wouldn't be missing all that much if you didn't see this movie. It tries to pass itself as historical fiction, pertaining to a time period in which magicians were willing to do anything to usurp their fellow illusionists, but at the end it dabbles much too far into the realm of impossibility-explained-with-science that it effectively ruins itself and drops down to the uninteresting "sci-fi" category.
For about the first two hours, it was what I expected. A dark, mysterious, captivating, and twisted piece of storytelling. I've come to associate each of those elements with director Christopher Nolan and his oddly familiar castChristian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Cane, and Scarlett Johansson. But at some point during the course of the above-average directing and acting, the writer messed up. I don't want to give away too much, but it effectively ruins the greatest magic trickthe Transported Manfrom the movie. It became convoluted. It tried so hard to be darker, more mysterious, more captivating, and more twisted, that it eventually turned itself into a pretzel. A crap covered one.
The final scenes made an attempt to fix up the original mess by delivering a punch that was actually thought-provoking. Still, you could pass this one up until it comes out on PPV or Blockbuster. Don't pay full price, unless you're a big "Batman Begins" fan and need something to satisfy your taste buds until "The Dark Knight" is released in 2008.