Critical Moviegoers

By Benjamín Nelson Valenzuela Salvatierra

The Prestige is a story about two men who were making their way into a competitive business. The difficult business of being a magician, or more accurately, an illusionist. This is mainly what moves the plot in The Prestige. There is a big rivalry, between these two former magician’s assistants. There is too much ambition from both of these young hard-working, but not equally talented magicians. It is an interesting plot, a well done script, and the excellent performances by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale makes this movie a great choice. The remarkable direction by Christopher Nolan (Inception, Memento, The Dark Knight) and his characteristic darkened environments, are also good reasons to watch this movie.

The rivalry gets out of control and both of them lose their minds trying to achieve the best of the shows. There is also a mixture of love, death, unfaithfulness, and lies all over the movie that can confuse you, because you know these men are not reliable. They’re illusionists, they like to play with you, they use love to make you believe something that it is not really true. It’s just part of their job. Once they get to the ultimate illusion, the stages turn into a battlefield. Innocents will be the ones who will lose the most in this battle. They took really high costs in their way to prove themselves as the best magician.

Borden (Bale) and Angier (Jackman) will deal with their issues throughout the entire movie. You will have to deal with your concentration in order to follow them every step of the way. You wouldn’t like to be fooled, attention and full concentration is needed. So, when they ask “Are you watching closely?” they cannot make you play the fool. Remember “the secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything”. Take a good chair and sit back as you watch this movie, you might be fooled more than once.