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User Reviews for: The Prestige

Whitsbrain
9/10  2 years ago
It's close. I don't know if this surpasses "The Dark Knight" as my favorite Christopher Nolan film but it's neck and neck.

"The Prestige" is a quite bit different that the action driven Batman films that Nolan is famous for. It's a great tale about competition using magic as it's plot driver. Magic is certainly interesting but once you know the trick it loses all of it's mystery. So Nolan throws us for a loop when he adds a Science Fiction element to the story featuring none other than the great inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla has always been a point of interest to me. He's someone that was so far ahead of others during his time that he seems otherworldly. The fact that Nolan weaves him into this story and turns this already mysterious but earthly tale into one of fantasy is quite a sleight of hand in itself.

The whole film is full of twists and surprises. It's well acted and it looks great which is what you'd expect from a Nolan film. This was a real conversation piece when I was talking movies with some friends recently. Any fan of Nolan's Batman films will like this. Fans of The Twilight Zone and other sources of Fantasy should watch this immediately.
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dgw
7/10  2 years ago
Spoiler-free summary: _The Prestige_ is a compellingly-told story about two deeply unlikable magicians.

[spoiler]For Angier's part, his obsession is clearly unhealthy. Cutter tells him as much, as does Tesla. He appeared to be friendly with Borden before the incident, and I'm not sure his transformation into a revenge-obsessed Lord is believable. Of course his _anger_ is believable, but where did he get such vast amounts of money if his magic career was struggling due to Borden's continuing sabotage?[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Then there's Borden: Whether or not he could remember which knot he tied that fateful night, I place at his feet all of the blame for Angier's self-destruction. Alfred never comes across as sorry in the least for his possible role in Julia's death. Presumably at that point in time, he wasn't living "half a life" yet, because The Transported Man wasn't yet being performed, so it can only have been _him_ on that stage. In the aftermath, he didn't even need to _help_ Angier. Simply _not_ sabotaging the career of the man whose wife he might have killed would have been enough to satisfy me.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]They're both complete jerks to each other, and one might reasonably expect Victorian men to have more honor than either displayed. It's frankly a bit disgusting how much intrigue Nolan wrung out of these two hotheaded pricks.[/spoiler]
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Jaitower
CONTAINS SPOILERS5/10  3 years ago
The film is entertaining, of course, but in my opinion, Nolan has lost his way. The story wants to go further than it can in itself.

First, the principle of operation of the Tesla coil is that it ionizes the air and allows wireless transmission of electricity. And yes, I criticize it because in the same movie they talk about selling a magic trick and at the same time they put this _Deus ex machina_ with shoehorn: the machine's ability to magically clone (never better). At the end of the film you see that the machine has an emitter and a receiver. However, with cats and hats it is not like that, they just appear out of nowhere in the garden. It is annoying that the film justifies itself simply by saying "it is science". Jules Verne in almost all his works or Mary Shelley with _Frankenstein_ tried to conceal science fiction, or at least make it credible, with words and not lightning and sounds. The main problem of this type of events is that, when the lack of internal coherence is perceived, it produces discomfort. On the one hand, it is an easy method to obtain the desired plot, but it has also made the whole thing not credible or even bordering on the absurd.

On the other hand, in my opinion, the dialogues are a bit lazy. It's impossible to believe that the characters in the story said all that nonsense with conviction. I refuse to believe it. Likewise, the existence of the twin brother is not credible, let alone that he cut off both fingers on purpose by magic. In other words, according to the film, the brothers have decided to live by swapping roles with fake glasses, a wig and a moustache and mute for the rest of their lives and sharing scars with each other. Ah! and the worst thing is that the death of one of them has not affected the other brother at all, instead he has gone to his former best friend to shoot him and tell him the story of his trick.

In short, entertaining to watch on TV on a boring day, but not to watch again.
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izgzhen
/10  6 years ago
Perplexed by the storyline at the beginning, deeply attracted to the narratives of the intense rivalry between two actors in the main body of the show, and finally shocked by the revealed truth, or *The Prestige* in the end. This is one of the most mind-blowing mysteries that I've watched in recent years.

One of the best part, I think, is how the characters of two young magicians are depicted -- through small but noticeable details like the facial expressions, one or two words, the novels et cetera.

In fact, the title of the movie, even being explained by Cutter in the beginning, still puzzles me and I can't stopped thinking about the meaning of it. Not to mention other puzzles. But ultimately, I came to realize that the plot structure corresponds to a epic magic show as well.
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AstroNoud
/10  2 years ago
There is great entertainment in seeing the two fellow-rivals battling each other, but it is only after the final twist that the viewer realises the entire film is a magic trick, a prestige, itself.

10/10
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