The Prestige

Decades before "Star Trek" and "The Fly" showed us how to transport people instantly between places near and remote, dueling magicians were doing it in turn-of-the-century theaters.

At least that's the premise of "The Prestige," the latest and perhaps the goofiest creation of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, the brothers who dreamed up the mind-bending "Memento" a few years ago.

This time the result is more like "The Illusionist," complete with a mind-boggling finale that throws so many twists at the audience that eventually it seems anything goes. The script, based on Christopher Priest's novel, entertains for awhile, but it grows increasingly desperate as it reaches third-act explanations.

Hugh Jackman plays the more conventional and commercial magician, Rupert Angier, while Christian Bale is the daring technical genius, Alfred "Freddie" Borden, who lacks Rupert's theatrical flair. Freddie's fatal flaw: he doesn't know how to present his tricks in the most crowd-pleasing manner.

But Freddie has created the ultimate magician's trick, "The Transported Man," while Rupert, who sometimes comes off as Salieri to his Mozart, is left sputtering behind. During an especially humiliating episode, Freddie invades Rupert's show and makes him look like an amateur.

Michael Caine plays Mr. Cutter, Rupert's aging assistant, a control freak who claims that "obsession is a young man's game" and usually bows out when he sees trouble brewing. He thinks part of the audience is always longing for an accident, and he has little use for such cheap thrills.

Also complicating the wizards' duels are the real-life inventor Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), his sidekick Mr. Alley (Andy Serkis), a pushy lawyer (Roger Rees) and Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), a woman with divided loyalties.

The script is chock full of lessons about magic and the nature of true love. Freddie, who claims that "secrets are my life," maintains that the essence of great illusions is keeping your mouth shut. Once you've revealed the secret of "the prestige" (the key "act" in every magic trick), it's all over.

"You're more in love with magic than you are with me," says Freddie's wife, Sarah (Rebecca Hall), who has an annoying habit of testing him daily in order to measure the depth of his affection. "Do you love me today?" she wonders. If he passes the test, she announces that "today it's true." No wonder Freddie falls so quickly for Olivia's calculated seduction.

Christopher Nolan also directed Bale and Caine in "Batman Begins," and he once more draws fine, detailed performances from his actors (he'll be working again with brother Jonathan on the upcoming Batman movie, "The Dark Knight"). Jackman is a strong match for Bale, and Bowie effectively plays Tesla as if he were an indifferent alien, resigned to the unfortunate fact that mankind can tolerate only so many innovations at a time.

They keep the tensions percolating in "The Prestige," as long as the characters bear some resemblance to recognizable people. But once the script starts to rely on arbitrary reversals and unlikely plot twists, it loses much of its suspense and charm.

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