Same old same old from Nolan, which isn't bad but isn't great...

Rating: 6/10 (1 November 2006)

No, I'm not going to give it away, since that would suck. But I won't hold back from certain problems so it might make it easier to figure out once you see it...
This is no 8.5 out of 10. It's just not. It's an adaptation of a book that gets confused, and a mystery that can't be solved because information is missing for a long while, and then once it's provided it's easy, but lame. This is the same problem that Batman Begins, and to a lesser extent, Momento suffers from. The endings are over dramatic and anti-climactic at once, and you are left wishing the movie was shorter and more interesting.
I won't give the "mystery" away other than to say the magic involved is so lame, it ruins the story by the end. Not the "illusions" but the REAL magic you hear about in the trailer, commercials, etc. The illusions were good though, and finding out a little about them as they are executed was entertaining. Not just how they work, but how you come up with them and how to remain "fresh" as a magical performer.
This movie has a lot of double crosses, but it reaches a point that there is no reason to believe anything being done or said is real. Thus you can't really have a stake in the story, you can't root for anyone, because you don't know who they are nor do you really like them. Everyone's a jerk!! Nobody is a hero, or takes the high road, or seems to have any sort of conscious about killing, maiming, or torturing other people. Everyone is vengeful and selfish and cruel.
The directing was all over the map, the plot gets muddled, and the pacing was very slow and labored. Maybe if 20-30 minutes were cut from this film it would have snapped and crackled like the Tesla machines that were misrepresented in the film.
And Nolan doesn't seem to care about time-lines and continuity at all. While it might have worked in Momento because of the nature of the film, in Batman the constant time shifting got tiresome, and in this film, despite it being inspired by the way the book works, Nolan does so little to distinguish between time periods and characters at various stages of their lives, you honestly can't tell who they are, when they are supposed to be at that point of the movie, and even what country they are in!
And that's pretty much the same complaint I had with Batman Begins. Batman wasn't likable either, the time skips and flashbacks and dreams got to be too convoluted and distracting, the villains got confused (as it was a mystery who was the bad guy, yet information wasn't provided as to why it was a mystery). Batman was also long, and lacked the fun factor, and it was overly dramatic. I guess the new trend in movies is "no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad" but I think that POV is as lame as many of the recent movies that espouse it.
And finally, to the acting. Michael Caine was being Michael Caine, and he was good enough, but phoning it in. Charlotte was underused and underdeveloped. The others were just there, completely unconvincing and one dimensional. Hugh Jackman had zero star quality in this movie and could have been any actor.
Then there's, Christian Bale, who's just too mediocre to pull off these roles. He was mediocre in American Psycho, he was mediocre in Batman, and he's just as mediocre here. He seems very disconnected from the other actors and the arena/world he's supposed to be inhabiting.
But hey, what do I know? Others seem to love this movie for some reason. I just thought it was okay. Not a waste of 2 hours, but nothing to recommend to your friends as a must see, either.
But if you are looking for film-making or mystery on the level of The Usual Suspects or Fight Club or even the 6th Sense, you'll be disappointed...