Writing credits
Jonathan Nolan and
Christopher Nolan

Hugh Jackman Christian Bale Michael Caine Piper Perabo Rebecca Hall Scarlett Johansson Samantha Mahurin David Bowie

Review by Larry Stanley
You will notice that I gave both 'The Prestige' and 'The Illusionist' the same number of stars. But that is not to say that one satisfies as much as the other does.
After seeing 'The Illusionist' a couple of times I was looking forward to seeing 'The Prestige' and when it opened I was one of the first one's in the theater. As I watched the film I noticed that the images were some of the best I had seen on screen in a long time, and that the director had gone out of his way to recreate a time in history that was on the verge of change, when mystery was still important and being the one to bring that need for the unknown to the public was important and intense.
Nolan seems to have a grasp on what life might have been like for a magician in the Victorian age, from clothing to the mechanical boxes with terrific lights and sparks flying that shocked an audience and gave them the emotional release they needed from a mundane life.
Rupert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) are both friends and young magicians learning the ropes from Michael Caine, playing an 'engineer', the man who comes up with the devices and equipment used in the show.
After an accident involving Borden and Angier's wife, the two become enemies, then rivals and finally reach a point where almost nothing is beneath or beyond what they are willing to do to destroy the other.
The obsessions of the two lead characters are what drives the film. And while the supporting cast is, in general, good and well chosen for their parts, it is still a film for Jackman and Bale. It is these two men who command 98% of this film, and who have a massive presence on the screen when they are on it. Usually.

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As I said, the supporting cast in general is good. And our two stars are in control most of the time.
The exception is the soft, almost underplayed character of Nikola Tesla, played with grace and style by, of all people, David Bowie. And while Tesla and the singer look only slightly alike, Bowie portrayed the great man as somewhat melancholy, lonely and sick at heart at what had been done to him over the years
In some ways, this movie was as much about Tesla as it was about either Jackman or Bale.
Michael Caine is as usual, brilliant in his role as friend and ally of Angier. Scarlett Johanssen as the as the stage assistant who becomes the willing betrayer in a somewhat sick love triangle, who is prostituted out to find the secrets of the other magician.
And while the movie plays fast and loose with the actual history of Tesla, the many machines and ideas formulated by him on screen are based on actual ideas and inventions of the great scientist during his life; and also the rivalry between Edison and Tesla is shown in minor detail, and on it's on is well worth examination.
I think that part of the problem with the movie was how they seemed to want to move from the idea of stage legerdemain to science to science fiction. It was as if Nolan had reached a point in the movie that he just could not figure out what next to do, so he just went further and further into the deep end of the ocean.
No, I didn't not enjoy the movie. But it just didn't leave me satisfied or happy. And I know that when Illusionist hits the DVD shelves, I will want a copy for my library. Not so with The Prestige.
It was a Three Star film, based on characters, story, plot, sets, and everything else.
But at the end of it, I just felt sort of dirty