Very Well Made Magic Tale

Rating: 8/10 (28 November 2017)

Christopher Priest's novel is given a class A film treatment here. With Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan's top notch screenplay, and Christopher's Directing talents, this film comes off very well.
Michael Caines Cutter character is good and his being the narrator is even better. Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier, and Christian Bale as Alfred Borden, the feuding magic men, and Scarlett Johanssons role as Olivia, the woman assistant between them are well acted roles.
Magic and deception are the keys to the plot. There is a little romance but the key elements here are the feud between the men, who will stop at nothing to outwit each other.
In the beginning, one lovely lady assistant dies as the result of a mistake by one of these guys when they are doing a joint act. After that, they split up because the dead woman was a wife of one of them. Then the rivalry begins.
They claw each other until the death trying to find out each others secrets. This all takes place in the late 19th century, and the settings for this are magnificent. There are 3 elements to each magic act, and the final curtain is the Prestige, where the audience gets something they do not expect.
In the case of this film, you have to watch the end of it to get what the movie viewer does not expect. It is very much worth watching. Very good film making here and the Nolans would go on to do Inception later on. This is a solid effort that shows how they got to the later film.