The Prestige (2006)

Even Magic Can't Help The Prestige

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Aug 30, 2007

Pros: The extreme twist ending makes for a real thinker of a movie.

Cons: This movie takes the road of Erik Larson's book, Thunderstruck in that it tries too hard to mix history and fiction, making for a difficult story to follow and understand.

This movie is yet another example of the lack of creativity in Hollywood. 'The Prestige' was released roughly two months after the more enjoyable movie, 'The Illusionist.' Its plot is diferent from, yet somewhat similar to, 'The I...llusionist.' What sets this one apart from the aforementioned movie is that for starters, audiences eventually find out there perhaps there is no good guy in this movie afterall. The obsession of the two magicians (played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman)to beat each other leads to the ultimate twist of the story. The twist is what makes it similar to 'The Illusionist.' Both movies revolve around a murder story. Only this murder story is even more twisted than its predecessor. The murder plot in question is also very similar to that of Erik Larson's 2006 novel, Thunderstruck. That novel tried to tie in two elements of history--an infamous murder and the work of scientist Guglielmo Marconi. Given, the two magicians in 'The Prestige' are fictional, that attempt to combine the real history with the fiction was done very loosely. The story is woven so loosely that it jumps from one point to another without any indication of the jumps back and forth in time. This makes it difficult to fully grasp what is going on at a given point. Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine did a wonderful job in trying to deal with the poorly written story. But Caine's 'Batman Begins' co-star, Christian Bale, should have been replaced by a real Brit. The one true mystery of this movie is not the twist ending, but how Jackman (an Australian) could so convincingly put on an American accent again, while Bale's attemp at sounding British was painful at best. Christopher Nolan did a great job directing 'Batman Begins.' But he should have found someone other than Christian Bale for Jackman's adversra if he wanted true realism. Thanks to the poor acting of Bale, and the poory written storyline, this movie will likely be forgotten years down the road. Read more Less