RUTHERFORD ON FILM: ‘The Prestige’: Filled with Trap Door and Tricks, But Will Your Attention Still be on the Screen at Finale?
By Tony RutherfordHuntington News Network Critic
Huntington, WV (HNN) -- Usually when watching a sleight-of-eye flick, you must allow a few improbable circumstances or write the picture off as too muddled to interpret and enjoy. Too, the best films with tricksters superbly wrap up the missed clues before the final credits roll.
"The Prestige" baffles both of these prerequisites. However, as a non reader of the novel, the complex, even to the point of potential boredom or , at least, a constant scratching of the head will be mandated to figure out the illusions, the mysteries, and the reality.
Briefly, this compound complex turn of the century tale of two rival magicians (played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) attempt to mount a "trick" that will brand him as London's greatest illusionist. Unfortunately, a knot that doesn't slip leads to the drowning death of Bale’s wife, whose resentment and blame of Jackman leads to obsession, revenge and eventual implosion.
Along the journey, viewers have to have their heads ready for rapid genre changes, as the injection of turn of the century science fact and science fiction with a touch of Sherlock Holmes will either garner an assessment of brilliance or leave you anxiously muddled for having missed a turn without blinking an eye.
My reference to science-fiction is intentional. Praise the cleverness of the story, but the men’s efforts to build a perfect “machine” for a perfect “trick” fails to smack one in the face with appropriate bows to a Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. Thus, unlike a masterful illusion, the building blocks do not fig snugly instead they wobble, sway and collapse. Nordoes not follow in the steps of "The Illusionist," rather its sophisticated secrets that combine physics, a static electricity device straight from the “lighting” section of Spencer’s Gifts and elusive distractions time after time that leave viewers spinning their brain wheels in supposition modes.
Spending 65 percent of its running time on various setups, by the final third of the film, your unsteady interest revives as the director Christopher (“Batman Begins”) Nolan finally chucks subtle evasiveness for more specific explanations. One might argue that what worked for Alfred Hitchcock should be enough here, but the foundation has to be solid for slick, crisp, one or two word (or scene) clues to lead viewers into a empathetic thriller. Here, debate reigns forever in a manner similar to the monolith of "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Still, you must praise the cast, which includes Michael Caine as a stoic, sly elderly magic master’s aide who cements the often jagged elements into a partially solved jigsaw puzzle, albeit with many pieces still resting sideways or upside down as square pegs for round holes.
My thumb points forward leaning upward and downward depending upon the section of the flick (first and mid portions lean downward, latter portions turn upward). The ambiguity that thrusts discussions of twins, clones, and other clues from a quickly spoken piece of dialogue there and another somewhere else hardly renders “The Prestige” worthy of a “Sleuth” and Agatha Christie type wrap.