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MovieMail's Review
Christopher Nolan’s return to the narrative ingenuities of Following and – after serving blockbuster duties on Batman Begins – charts an ever-multiplying rivalry between the Magic Circle’s very own Mozart and Salieri: cockney grafter Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and aristocratic American showman Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), attempting to one-up each other in 1890s London by performing the greatest trick the world has ever seen.
Staged as a series of flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks, held together by narration from notebooks deliberately written to mislead their readers, it nonetheless makes a dazzling kind of sense. Nolan has a real feel for the work of the theatrical conjuror, and how tricks are thought up, performed and perfected; the film might just as effectively be called Practical Magic, were that title not already taken. If you saw The Prestige in the cinema, DVD will reveal exactly how the film’s masterful sleight-of-hand is achieved; if you missed it first time around, then a whole host of surprises await to be pulled out of this particular top hat.
Christoper Nolan's latest work sees two rival magicians compete for trade secrets in turn-of-the-century London. The competition gradually turns increasingly sinister. The two leads are superb, as are Michael Caine and David Bowie in odd but effective supporting roles.