The Prestige

Based on the novel by Christopher Priest, and directed by Christopher Nolan (the virtuoso sleight-of-hand artist responsible for Memento), this tale about a couple of turn-of-the-20th-century London prestidigitators is sadly short of genuine cinematic magic. In The Prestige, an accidental onstage death creates enmity between two young magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale), leading to a long-term rivalry in which each seeks to destroy the other personally and professionally, eventually escalating into a contest to perfect an illusion in which the performer is miraculously transported from one side of the stage to the other. Like his protagonists, Nolan is also playing with the audience, telling the story in a nonlinear fashion (the film opens with a murder trial, before flashing backwards and forward and sideways), before serving up a series of closing revelations. With the exception of Scarlett Johansson as an ineffective love interest, the film is strongly cast (Michael Caine and David Bowie are on hand, the latter as Nikola Tesla, famous rival to Thomas Edison), and beautifully lensed, but in the end there's less here than meets the eye. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include a “Director's Notebook” section with behind-the-scenes and production featurettes, including “Conjuring the Past” (5 min.), “The Visual Maze” (4 min.), “Metaphors of Deception” (4 min.), “Tesla: The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century” (3 min.), and the brief “Resonances”; an art gallery; and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for a beautiful but disappointing film.] (F. Swietek)