A forgettable, mundane movie

Rating: 5/10 (20 October 2006)

This movie was a moderate disappointment to me. From the beginning, it jumped back and forth in time, making it unnecessarily difficult to follow, and largely spoiling any potential to maintain a sense of suspense. This became very annoying after a while.
The thing that I found most annoying, was the movie revealed its one surprise, pretty early on, and then kept waving it in front of the viewers' eyes again and again. To the extent that it was at all difficult to predict the gist of the outcome well in advance, that was only because the jumping back and forth made it a little difficult to assemble the pieces in the proper sequence.
At the end, they did the obligatory sequence to explain to the audience what had happened, but by then, I was so tired of the anticipation for that obligatory moment, and so annoyed by the number of times that they had already revealed the "surprise", that it was annoying. I am confident that almost everyone in the audience had similarly figured it out, although most of them probably weren't as annoyed by it as I was.
The only real surprise in this movie was David Bowie's performance. Not that it was a great role, but it was surprising to see David Bowie in this role at all, and he played it for all it was worth.
This movie is being grossly overrated by the IMDb membership. It's probably worth the cost of a DVD rental, but there are much better movies to spend your money on at the theater.
SPOLER ALERT: For anyone who is unable to figure out what I am talking about: from the moment that Borden appeared magically in Sarah's apartment, the story gave away the fact that he had a twin. That happened early on in the movie. The movie is about tricks and illusions, not about magic, so there is no way that anyone watching the movie could not have realized right then and there that Borden had a twin.
The pieces of information that were spoon fed to the audience, could potentially be explained by either of two alternative theories. One was that Tesla had previously made the same machine for Borden, in which case Borden's twin was the product of that machine. The other potential explanation is that Borden had a twin all along. For a brief period at about the middle of the movie, it isn't apparent which of these possible explanations is correct, but the only reason why you are uncertain for even that brief period, is because the effect of chopping up the story is that you don't have all the information. But as soon as you are allowed to see just a teeny bit more of the missing pieces, you realize that Borden did not have a similar machine, and that if he had, he certainly would not have sent his rival on a quest to procure a similar machine. Hence, you are left trying to figure out where Borden's twin had been hiding up until the point when Borden starts performing the transported man trick. Even worse, you are left trying to ignore the sheer absurdity with what remains: Borden had sent his rival on a wild goose chase across the Atlantic ocean to visit Tesla in the Rocky Mountains, and by coincidence, Tesla happens to know how to make a transporter machine!
"The Prestige" is a silly, second-rate story told in a confusing, chopped up manner, in order to confuse the audience, and to make it seem as though there was more to the story than there actually was. Will audiences ever wise up to this sort of chicanery?