The Prestige
Like his breakthrough, “Memento,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige” is a clever, entertaining, shallow puzzle movie. But you don’t go to a Nolan movie for its emotional potency. You go to get a kick out of being toyed with. (At least when he’s at his best: I’d say you go to “Insomnia” to be annoyed and to “Batman Begins” to be bored.) Using a savvy and confident time-hopping structure, “The Prestige” chronicles dueling magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) in turn-of-the-century London. And when I say dueling, I mean ten-paces-at-dawn dueling: These guys want each other dead. But they have to kill with flair. Nolan and his co-writer brother, Jonathan, seduce you into the insular world of illusionists and their trade secrets, but of course, the biggest trick is on you. “Are you watching closely?” they keep asking. They want you to be arguing about exactly what happened when you walk out of the theater. For my part, I was doing my best to ignore the smugness of the magicians — and by extension the Nolan boys — who argue that audiences want to be fooled, and that few will see clearly enough to glean the truth. In the case of “The Prestige,” I think that’s balderdash. The more you think about it, the greater the risk you’ll start to think it’s really, really silly. Actually, the same goes for a magic show. So just sit back and have fun, because thankfully there’s plenty to be had.