Saw The Prestige last night. Three-and-one-half Agitator megaphones.

It’s a terrific movie — dark, captivating, and features a deliciously serpentine plot. It’s from Christopher Nolan, of Memento fame. Hugh Jackman is decent as the lead, a Victorian-era illusionist named Robert Angier. But Christian Bale makes the movie as fellow illusionist and Angier blood-rival Alfred Bordn. He’s phenomenal. The always-great Michael Caine also stars as Cutter, a sort of mentor and mediator to Angier. Nolan also cast David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, the famous inventor, whose late-in-life eccentricities the movie draws upon for its wicked plot twists (provided you can suspend disbelief just a bit). Casting Bowie as Tesla was quirky and a bit risky, but I think ultimately to great effect. I didn’t even realize it was Bowie until reading about the movie afterward.

Scarlett Johansson’s role is essentially to look good, and she more than capably carries out the task.

The film features the kind of surprise ending that will have you rethinking the entire movie, scouring early scenes for foreshadowing and running themes that you at the time didn’t realize would be pertinent later. The scenes with Tesla in Colorado Springs and the allusions to his rivalry with Thomas Edison are also fun and interesting, and carry the added cache of being based on historical fact.

Bale is phenomenal, Caine is Caine, and the magic, plot twists, and the costumes, setting, and escapism of a period piece make it a helluva’ good show.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 5:18 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.