Good show, but just short of true magic.

Rating: 8/10 (24 March 2007)

In some sense, you can consider The Prestige Christopher Nolan's return to his Memento tricks after his bat-movie excursion. Working again with his writer-brother Jonathan, Nolan brings us back to a movie that spins and whirs with movie magic, but as much as I'm impressed by the presentation of the film, I feel like somewhere along the way, the film lost its heart. Let me explain.
The basic setup is this: Two young magicians become bitter and deadly rivals after a trick goes wrong. When we start the movie, we hear Michael Caine telling us the basics of magic. There's the pledge, the turn and the prestige. Nolan (or shall I say Nolans?), trickster that he is, takes this concept of magic and uses it as the structure to the film as well. This is akin to how Nolan built his narrative structure in Memento around the memory loss concept, but in The Prestige, the story is told far more straightforwardly than its predecessor, even with all of its twists and turns.
Yes, this is a movie about magic, like its recent colleague The Illusionist and like what you'd expect from a film about magic, things aren't as they seem in the film. But the Prestige left enough clues early on that a well-read kid like me could pick up on all the twists and turns before they came. Fortunately, the film still manages to be quite fun even if you know what's coming up because the presentation of the film is quite enjoyable. Nolan has this stony directorial style that bathes everything in a shade of cool, which works really well for movies about bat-themed crusaders and yes, even about magic.
On the downside, the film spends so much time trying to be tricky that I think it misses out a little on the tragedy of the two characters. Not to say that it doesn't touch on it, but I feel the overall film would've benefited a bit from focusing just a little less on the "ooh, I'm so clever" turns and a little more on the different effects of obsession on the main characters and its consequences on their lives. By the time the credits rolled, I saw that the film was trying, but it wasn't enough to get me at a visceral level. There was too much cool, too much showmanship and it was all very entertaining, but I saw hints of a really good drama underlying it all and I think it got lost a little in all the show.
I loved the period stuff, I loved that Nikola Tesla was put in the film, played surprisingly well by rocker David Bowie. The minor characters and the major characters, I felt, were all played well and the direction was clear. I do have to admit that I probably would've been even more impressed by the film if I wasn't able to peek behind the wizard's curtain and figure things out too early. And unlike The Illusionist, this film does resolve its magic, so you're not left unsatisfied by an ambiguous story.
The other problem I had with the story is that it was hard to develop sympathy for the main characters once they started battling. What they do doesn't draw sympathy anymore because there doesn't seem to be much left to redeem--both characters become shells of men and there's nothing left for me to hope for. Despite the fact that we are given the perspective of Hugh Jackman's character, I found myself just as much concerned (even though it wasn't much) for Christian Bale's character. But since both characters have such despicable traits and neither seems to really manage to overcome them or add a real dimension of humanity to them, they become a little two-dimensional.
But still, I was genuinely entertained, just by the impressive presentation and storytelling. And it's a rather enjoyable film about magic. I was just let down because the setup had potential to be a little more and it didn't seize it. A rather enjoyable film, but not great. 8/10.