The Prestige Starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale

Greetings and Salutations! This is Michael Wyatt, trick movie review writer extraordinaire, here to tell you all about The Prestige. Are you reading closely?

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 probably isn't.

I saw the movie trailer for The Prestige, and I was expecting a duel between real life magicians in turn of the century London. They had me fooled with that illusion! The creepy sound effects, the fast editing... that was a nice movie trailer. It promised a supernatural effects-laden blockbuster with Dr Fate on one side and Dr Strange on the other, duking it out with magick between occasional stage shows. It didn't represent the movie at all.

The second act is called "The Turn"; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it.

This was a great movie! But don't go expecting that supernatural effects-laden blockbuster. In fact, I would have to go out on a limb and put this as a potential sleeper hit like Donnie Darko or Fight Club that will do fair at the theater and extremely well on DVD. This movie is part whodunnit, part flashback sequence, and all intrigue, misdirection, and illusion. You will likely spend most of the early part of the movie wondering which magician you should like and which you should despise only to change your mind once or twice before it's over.

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 seen before.