A promising film becomes an infuriating waste of time (contains spoilers)

Rating: 2/10 (24 October 2007)

This contains spoilers but the film deliberately spoils its own plot.
I loved the first half of the film - thinking I was in for multiple insights into magician's tricks and for the narrative to play similar tricks on the viewer. In fact, of course, a trick is played on the viewer, but it is infuriating, disappointing, cynical and ultimately leaves you feeling cheated. I give two stars out of 10 because it is well shot and the first third/half is done well - 0 out of 10 for the rest of the film SPOILERS: The film sets up and then deliberately telegraphs what the "answer" is to Borden's trick, (which is the same "answer" to the plot). The idea is to get the audience to guess that Fallon is Borden's double, but then to reject it because it is so obvious and too poor a denouement to a two-hour film, which is predicated (eg, by Cutter's VOs) on being clever and which is constantly, if implicitly, bragging that it will fool you. It plays upon the sophisticated modern viewer's knowledge that there must be a very clever solution at the end of the film - then defeats your expectations when the exceptionally obvious solution (which has been continually raised throughout the film) is, in fact, the real and only solution. So you have the jarringly obvious clues that Borden is two people which occur right the way throughout the film, in the comments of his wife for instance; the painfully obvious underplaying of Fallon's character (in a film in which Tesla is played by David Bowie, you very quickly notice you don't even know which bizarre choice of actor the casting director has called upon to play Fallon, while it is rather comically obvious at all times that he is wearing "a disguise") - and of course, Cutter simply announces that Borden obviously has a double. The only reason given for this not to be true is that his double has also lost his fingers - given Borden's insistence that you have to sacrifice yourself for your art, it is easily guessed that the double has cut his fingers off too. Just as the characters within the film denounce the "double" solution as being too obvious, so the audience is meant to - Nolan creates this "answer" in such a way as to make it look like a red herring. When the red herring turns out to be the true plot twist and not mis-direction, you have been fooled - but in a deeply disappointing way - the only twist is that, in fact, there is no twist. Instead of leaving you gasping in admiration at the cleverness of a plot "trick", the film simply leaves you annoyed and disappointed. Of course, Cutter and Borden have been saying all along, while talking of tricks, that it is very disappointing when you realise how obvious the solution to a trick is - but this should not apply to the denouement of a film - you should not be disappointed. This disillusionment was very quickly followed, in my case at least, by the realisation that the doubles "plot" is ludicrous - why don't Borden and "Fallon" not tell the wife that there are two of them, which would solve her suicidal anguish and, presumably, the anguish of one of the brothers. Instead,the twins/doubles allow her to believe her husband is having an affair and doesn't love her half of the time - when in fact her husband loves her all the time and is not having an affair, it is his twin who is sleeping with Olivia. In fact, why do they keep swapping roles and Borden/Fallon alternate who talks to the wife? It is merely cruel, pointless and, of course, has only occurred to serve the feeble plot line. How anyone can call this a 10/10 film is utterly beyond me.
There is a final insult to the viewer's intelligence - while Borden's trick turns out to have the obvious solution, Angier's trick is not a trick at all - it involves some sort of sci-fi Star Trek teleporter. You are also shown this before the end, so even this deeply poor "solution" is not kept as some sort of final revelation.
Waste of two hours of my time - I'm still angry about it so it has basically screwed another hour afterwards too