SPOILER ALERT:  If you would like to be surprised by every aspect of The Prestige, avoid reading the sixth paragraph of this review.  Otherwise, read at your own risk. 

The Prestige is about the sleight-of-hand of magicians.  It’s also director Christopher Nolan’s attempt at pulling a sleight-of-hand on the audience.  Viewing The Prestige with an analytical eye, it’s easy to spot the twists and turns before they occur.  It’s too bad that in most cases, the curtain cannot remain closed into the final act.

Much like a trick, The Prestige contains “the pledge,” “the turn,” and “the prestige.”  The Prestige is more than pulling a rabbit out of a hat or making a bird disappear.  To relate to one of the film’s recurring tricks: the bird isn’t necessarily killed, but in the revelation of “the prestige,” the trick is lessened.

At the turn of the 19th century in London, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), his wife Julia (Piper Perabo), and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) work as an apprentice, assistant, and apprentice – respectively – to a magician.  When one of the magician’s tricks goes wrong and Julia dies, Robert blames Alfred, forever changing their friendship to rivalry.

As Angier develops into “The Great Danton” and Borden into “The Professor,” each magician strives to outdo the other and learn his secrets.  One trick in particular, “The Transported Man,” pushes Angier to pawn his own assistant, Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson), off onto Borden as a spy.  When the plan backfires, tragic consequences ensue for both men of magic. 

The Prestige is the type of impressively executed production that carries with it the ability to cloud the mind.  You will certainly want to view the film again and again.  On repeat viewings, you’ll catch more of what makes it special.  Yet, if you were shocked - in a The Sixth Sense sort of way - on the initial watch, then repeat viewings will reveal the clues that some viewers spotted easily the first time around.

These “obvious clues” include the wife’s ability to decipher whether or not her husband meant his words, using a double with a strikingly similar handicap, a dad who doesn’t remember that he promised to take his daughter to the zoo, and the pretense of living your entire life as part of an act.  The inclusion of Chung Ling Soo is the most crippling to keeping “the prestige” under wraps; this American who disguised himself as a Chinaman lived his entire life without breaking character in public - much like Borden.  Even so, in spite of the clear indications, the final “twist” parallels that of an X-files episode titled “The Amazing Maleeni.”

When a mash-up of a variety of elements successfully comes together, it’s like magic.  While The Prestige is audacious, complex, and praiseworthy, it falls short of the magic act it’s cracked up to be. Nonetheless, you do get your money’s worth.  The acting is intense, the direction creditable.  Above all, The Prestige is a dynamic period piece.

However, when the movie dovetails into Nikola Tesla’s (David Bowie) historic scientific research, it is Tesla’s machinery that is hailed as paranormal sorcery, while the movie’s mystical magic is minimized to mere illusions and trickery.  Why spiral into subatomic science-fiction in the middle of a perplexing magic show?  And again, why play the audience for fools?

Amidst these two questions still lies a supernatural motion picture.  See it to believe it.