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Hugh Jackman & Micheal Cain. (David Bowie plays Dr. Tesla). EXCELLENT entertainment. Well written and great cast. You won't be dissapointed. Loved the twists! 10/10

Great movie ! 8.5/10 good cast, good story !!

one of THE most amazing movies i have ever watched , a true masterpiece . Man .. i wish if at lease some of the movies would be half as good as this one was ... truly amazing ,...

My Fav movie! along side the illusionist :) with Edward Norton

Can't wait 2 see scarlett, christian, and hugh...all great actors
Plus wonderful trailer

:D I can't wait for The Prestige!!! The book is amazing, as will be the movie!

Every great magic trick consists of three acts.

The first act is called The Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course, it isn't.
The second act is called The Turn. The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it.
That's why there's a third act called The Prestige. This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never see before.

-Harry Cutter (Michael Caine)- The Prestige

Directed by Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, Memento, Following) and co-scripted with his brother Jonathan Nolan, The Prestige is a period fantasy thriller/drama centered on an increasingly obsessive, bitter rivalry between magicians in late 19th-century London. Based on Christopher Priest's 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel, The Prestige is as much of a personal project as can be made within the Hollywood studio system. Nolan hoped to make The Prestige before Batman Begins, but time ran short and he didn't feel the screenplay was ready. Moviegoers will be glad Nolan decided to wait, as the screenplay for The Prestige balances a complex temporal structure with an equally complex, but no less absorbing, story.

The Prestige follows Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), wannabe magicians and friendly rivals learning their craft under Harry Cutter (Michael Caine), a self-styled "illusion engineer" who creates magic tricks for Milton (Ricky Jay). As part of the act, Angier and Borden masquerade as paying members of the audience, "volunteering" as necessary to add verisimilitude to Milton's magic act. They assist Milton's assistant, Julia (Piper Perabo), into a variation of the "Chinese water-torture" trick. At first, the act goes as planned, but a tragic accident (or a negligent act) permanently ends Angier and Borden's friendship, leading to growing enmity between the two men that begins in competition and gamesmanship, but soon devolves into obsession and violence.

Borden, a talented magician but no showman, struggles to make a name for himself as the "Professor." Penniless, Borden takes solace in his relationship with Sarah (Rebecca Hall), whom he meets at a magic show, courts and later marries. Angier employs Cutter as his illusion engineer. A natural performer, Angier's popularity grows, but it's Borden new act, "The Transported Man," that finally transforms Borden into a popular magician. In "The Transported Man," Borden instantaneously teleports himself from one position on the stage to another. Angier rejects Cutter's simple, elegant solution, but his envy gets the better of him. He steals Borden's act and uses a double, an out-of-work, alcoholic actor, to duplicate Borden's act.

Despite financial and critical success, Angier sends his assistant/lover, Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), to work for Borden, instructing her to steal Borden's notebook. Unfortunately for Angier, Borden's notebook is written in code and without the key; Borden's secrets remain undiscovered. The notebook offers enough tantalizing clues, however, to send Angier to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to seek out a visionary scientist, Nikola Tesla, who may just the answers Angier is looking for. Angier's return to London with the new machine returns him to prominence, but Angier has set a different plan in motion. To succeed, he needs to draw Borden one last time to see him perform publicly.

Thematically, The Prestige follows a straightforward template: tragedy leads to revenge; revenge leads to obsession, and obsession leads inevitably to tragedy. The Prestige also touches on doppelgangers, twins, and the question of identity (self-invented and otherwise), but these ideas aren't explored in any depth, but they're key to the major and minor revelations that make The Prestige as entertaining and yes, as affecting, as it is. Everyone, it seems, has a double, but in this world, doubles are (mostly) antagonists, mirror images of each other that subconsciously understand that only one of them can survive. Only two characters, Cutter and Borden's daughter, don't have doubles or antagonists, but each character is forced to choose between Borden and Angier several times.

Structurally, The Prestige the Nolan Brothers eliminated the novel's present-day framing story and secondary characters, focusing instead on Borden and Angier and their ongoing conflict across three timelines, one set in the present-tense (but still in the 19th century), and two others from Borden and Angier's perspectives, as detailed through their respective diaries. The present-tense scene that opens The Prestige finds one character in mortal jeopardy, then goes back in time to follow Borden and Angier's early friendship, the turn into tragedy, and the growing enmity between the two men. And yes, a film centered on magicians also includes a fair share of misdirection, all of it, of course intentional, as well as visual cues that prove to be vitally important later on to deciphering what happens and when it happens (hint: the first image we see provides an important clue to the secret behind Angier's machine).

In less assured directorial hands, a film constructed around intricate, interweaving storylines set in three different time periods would probably confuse most moviegoers, but that's definitely not the case with The Prestige. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan's screenplay is a model of economy, offering information only as needed, repeating lines of dialogue across different moments in time, each time reflecting new, sometimes contradictory meanings that only become clear late in the film, and balancing tension, suspense, and surprise; all of which looks easier than it really is. It's not, as evidenced by the several years the Nolan brothers took to adapt Priest's novel, pruning away almost everything except the central conflict between Borden and Angier. Not surprisingly, Priest read and approved the Nolans' script before they began filming The Prestige.

The Prestige was one of this season's films I anticipated most, and Christopher Nolan delivered the goods. Right in line with his complex, dark psychological drama in Memento to his character-driven revival of the tired Batman franchise, The Prestige is a suspenseful magic act itself. As layer on layer of its secrets are pulled away, the more lines blur between illusion and reality. Even as the film's head-to-head conclusion between magicians arrives, the audience is left to appreciate the difference between knowing how the trick is done and Nolan's ability to peform it so masterfully.

Don't listen to the critics on this one. This film is one of the best of 2006. It's beautifully directed, performed and photographed... and it has more tricks up its sleeve than David Copperfield. As usual, the critics have forgotten how to be entertained - and Noland and Co. do that so well.

This movie wouldn't end. Not because it could have but because it takes forever to get to the point. When the ending finally comes, you aren't shocked by any twists, you are just relieved it is over. The movie with its story would have been great if it was shorter. The ending would have more impact too.