Great ideas and production - weak on personality

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2006)

There's so much good in this movie that I hate to write a negative review. The actors were superb and the production was excellent. However, about midway through the movie I was taken with the urge to leave the theater... and I never leave theaters. My best rationale for that feeling is that the movie became so single-mindedly obsessed with revenge that the only thing holding my attention was the secret of the 'trick'.
And when I (very proudly) conceived of the notion that there were twins involved, I struggled to reconcile this with Angier's plot. I could not pin it down until the very end for one main reason - after working through an entire movie entrenched in reality and illusion, I could not conceive of some science fiction (deus ex machina) thrown in to solve the problem.
What a weak way to end it. Would have been better had Angier waited until his enemy was in the audience and timed it perfectly to kill himself but once - the ultimate sacrifice to frame him for murder. This entire duplicate thing just left me feeling let-down.