The Prestige

Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called "The Pledge"; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn"; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it, that's why there's a third act called, "The Prestige"; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before.

The Prestige is the movie you have never seen before with all the twists and turns of a magic show. The Prestige will have you making assumption, guesses and of course how did he do that. Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins) directs this dark movie about the world of magic and the price one has to pay to be the best. The camera angles Nolan uses to show this movie are extremely well shot. You get the complete aspect of a magic show and he lets you try and see, if you can, the tricks that these magicians perform. Nolan and Jonathan Nolan also wrote the screenplay for The Prestige which is another reason the movie is so tastefully done. When a director has a hand in writing the script he has a better grasp on directing the movie. Hugh Jackman (X-Men) and Christian Bale (American Psycho, Batman Begins) play the dueling magicians Angier and Borden. Each one always trying to outdo the other and by any means necessary trying to make the other magician baffled. Michael Caine (Austin Powers in Goldmember) plays Cutter, the creator of most of the dueling magicians tricks. Scarlett Johansson (The Black Dhalia) plays Olivia, the assistant and love interest of Angier. David Bowie (If you don’t know who this then you don’t know music, Labyrinth) plays the mad scientist Tesla, who creates electrical machines for defying natural laws.

A Friendship, That Became a Rivalry...A Rivalry, That Became a Battle. As most movies are done The Prestige shows something that happens and then flashes back to show you why it did. The prestige starts with Angier (Jackman) performing a trick and with the use of a trap door falls into a tank of water which locks him in. Borden (Bale) who is under the stage at the time watches as Angier can’t get out and drowns. Borden is then placed on trial for the murder of Angier. While incarserated Borden is given Angiers diary that accounts for his time leading up to his death. The Prestige then goes back to when the two magicians were friends and protégés of Milton (played by magician Ricky Jay). When a tragedy happens and Angier’s wife (Piper Perabo, Cheaper By The Dozen) drowns in a magic trick, Angier blames Borden because he was the one who tied her wrists together for the trick. Angier with rage and payback all that matters to him does what he can to get Borden back and find out how he does his tricks. Borden’s journal is stolen by Angier, who uses it to try and better his own act and outdo Borden. What the other doesn’t know is that other is one step ahead of him. Borden is one step ahead of Angier, Angier is one step ahead of Borden and the trick is to find out who made the first step.

The Prestige takes you through the mind of two men with obsessions for their magical art and as it moves back and forth between Borden's and Angier's points of view and lives, and also forward and backward in time, to show their rise to prominence on the stage, and their growing hatred for one another that begins with one death and ends with many.

The Prestige gets a 4.5 out of 5.

This is a MUST OWN.