The Prestige -- 2006 -- PG-13

Movies tend to come in pairs so with the Illusionist, we get paired up with The Prestige, a word used to describe the climax of a magic trick. We get this built up at the beginning of the film so that we understand what the word means in context, and from there, we move into a truly bizarre film of the dark underbelly of the world of the slight-of-hand magicians.

Where the Illusionist gave us a magician-against-the-world, this films involves a rivalry between old friends. Something happens to cause the death of the wife of one of the men, and they are enemies forever as one blames the other. This rivalry goes on for years with each one competeing for the attention the world gives the other, and the public being fickle as they are, they easily give their attention to one or the other throughout the course of the movie.

The rivalry come to a peak when one of them comes up with a trick called The 
Transported Man. The other cannot figure out how the trick is done, and so he sets himself on the task of discovering the "prestige" of this trick, and goes to great lengths and costs to figure it out.

The main characters are very well developed and while it's hard to sympathize with them, you understand their rivalry while wanting to smack them both upside the head and tell them to get over it. But we also understand why they won't. The magic is fun to watch, especially getting a sense of what goes on behind the scenes, which is a big focus of the film. It's wild seeing some of the mechanics and gadgets these people go thru to pull off their slight-of-hand...as well as how things can go terribly wrong if the trick is not done right.

We get a fair share of twists and mysteries throughout to keep us intrigued and curious as to what the heeck is going on, and even when we know what is going on, we are constantly plagued by how and why, which do get answered in sometimes unexpected ways. It becomes an almost constant case of just when you think you've got it, the movie pulls its own slight of hand, and sends you off in a new direction.

So I completley enjoyed this one. It wasn't too over the top or unfounded, and we get a satisfying ending and explanation to all the weird and unanswered questions. You can make your guesses as you go along, but chances are, your guesses will be incorrect. We start with a mystery not fully satisfied until the final moments, and that's a hard thing to pull off.