Been a while since a good ol’ movie review. And I saw this one a few weeks back and I’m still thinking about it, so hey. Time to fire up the review section of this blog again. xD

The Prestige

Synopsis:

Period thriller set in Edwardian London where two rival magicians, partners until the tragic death of an assistant during a show, feud bitterly after one of them performs the ultimate magic trick – teleportation. His rival tries desperately to uncover the secret of his routine, experimenting with dangerous new science as his quest takes him to the brink of insanity and jeopardises the lives of everyone around the pair.

 

Good stuff:

• Plot twists

Probably my favorite part of this movie was the unexpected twists (which I won’t say anything about here because… you know… spoilers.) But seriously, all the twists we got were very well set up for, and this whole movie was very intricately layered together in a super impressive way. I’m proud of myself for guessing one of the big ones pretty near the end, but seriously, it added a lot to the movie just to have that element there and all the small things that played into it. 

• Cool historical setting

Listen, Victorian stuff is cool and everything. But Edwardian stuff involving when electricity was just coming into play, and making use of both Britain and America in this time period for your story? That is super cool and a great use of the time period. The whole feel and setting of this movie was just awesome and I loved it. 

• Neat concept

Just… come on. Rival stage magicians coming up with a bunch of new tricks to try and outdo each other? Set in Edwardian times with a bunch of plot twists and mystery involved? 

• Good acting

Get Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Scarlett Johansson  as your leads and this is gonna be an obvious thing. Very good acting throughout. ❤ (I mean, I would have very much preferred if they were all friends, but…. we’ll get to that.)

• Theme

One of the things I thought on the most after finishing it was the theme, honestly. There was the very interesting approach of having both the main characters be wrong? Each of them went too far, but just in opposite directions. Sort of illuminating the film’s theme from different angles. And I thought that was really cool. 

• Well written overall

Sort of a given after all I’ve said, but yeah. Writing was amazing and definitely my favorite in this. xD

 

Bad stuff:

• Dark and depressing

You know there are some movies that leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling and a smile on your face?

This movie left me a little more like this:

My writer side was very happy with this, yes. But this movie was dark, man. I really would have appreciated a few lighter elements maybe. And a little more than two lines that made me smile. 

I mean a lot of it is just Christopher Nolan’s style, yeah. And it doesn’t detract from quality in any way. 

But I can’t really say I’ll be going back to this movie just going by what a downer it was. xD

• Hard to follow

I’ll tell you this much: you’d better be. xD

Between multiple timelines, and little to no exposition at all, it’s incredibly important you’re paying all the attention you can to figuring this plot out. 

I mean, tight storylines are great. And I really like everything tying into everything else (so this is also a plus in a way?) But honestly, I wouldn’t have been mad if this movie could have just played out in chronological order. The flashbacks and flashforwards were a little much in my opinion. 

• A few bloody/uncomfortable parts

There’s drowning. There’s death. There’s some loss of digits and blood. 

Not what I’d qualify as like… a lot of violence. But enough pain to make you squirm. 

 

Overall:

A work of art. But just slightly confusing, depressing art. It’ll make your writer side happy, and your viewer side want to crawl into a hole and watch cartoons to recover. 

 

Hope you guys enjoyed my review! Have a great rest of your Monday, everyone. ❤

What’s your favorite Nolan movie?

~writefury