Review: The Prestige

UK release date: 10th November

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige manages to seem both highly original and slightly old-fashioned at the same time. Its Victorian English setting is familiar from Hammer horrors but, while there have been many films with an element of magic, few have been set in the world of the professional illusionist.

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are two magicians whose intense rivalry dates back to a time when they were both apprentices and Angier’s wife died after a trick went wrong. Fuelled by professional jealousy and personal hatred, they dedicate their talents to destroying each other.

The film is told largely in flashback, as befits a director whose previous work includes the reverse-ordered Memento. Nolan constructs a fascinating tale that twists and turns at every opportunity, although there is perhaps one twist too many in a slightly overbaked denouement. But the film is grounded by the seriousness with which he treats his material and by fine performances all round.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 130mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

News: Scarlett Johansson

Even before this week’s magical movie, Hollywood’s hottest starlet had got used to working alongside her The Prestige co-star Hugh Jackman on the set of Woody Allen’s Scoop, yet to be scheduled for a UK release, where she plays an American journalism student in London who lands a big story – and an affair with Jackman’s aristocrat. She’ll be cropping up as a student again (well, she is still only 21, with her 22nd on the 22nd of this month) in American Splendor directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s New York-set The Nanny Diaries, where she’ll play the titular nanny, living and trying to keep up with her studies in the household of Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney’s Mr and Mrs X.

But Johansson’s far too canny to risk getting typecast, so it’s good to see her lending her help to the current revival of the period drama, with no less than four historical projects in the works. She is still attached to star as Betsy Balcombe, the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s British jailer at the end of the French Emperor’s life, in Napoleon and Betsy – although the project seems to have been on hiatus for some months. More recently announced – though with little as yet known other than that it came from an idea by Johansson herself – is Amazon, which could well be a female version of Gladiator, with Johansson in the Russell Crowe role as an avenging warrior in 200BC.

Most interestingly, however, is a brace of British-based history pieces, both set in the Tudor era. First up, based on the bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory and directed by the man behind the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House, is The Other Boleyn Girl. With Eric Bana lined up as Henry VIII and Natalie Portman as his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn, Johansson will play the “other” Boleyn of the title, Anne’s sister Mary, who was also having an affair with the King. After that, Johansson will take on royalty herself in Mary Queen of Scots, with her in the title role, based on a script by Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern. See? They always told you that history could be cool…

News: Hugh Jackman

Though almost unknown when heended up as a last-minute replacement for Dougray Scott on the first X-Men film back in 2000, Hugh Jackman’s career is now in full-on overdrive, with his turn in this week’s The Prestige just the latest impressive addition to his film CV. With his own X-Men spin-off, Wolverine, due for 2008, this freshest Australian superstar is really churning them out,with lead roles alongside his The Prestige co-star Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen’s Scoop and Rachel Weisz in Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious The Fountain and voice work as a rat in Wallace and Grommit creators Aarman Animation’s Flushed Away and as a penguin in the much-anticipated Happy Feet already completed and ready for imminent release.

Of Jackman’s other upcoming projects, most interesting are likely to be The Tourist, where he’ll play a lawyer who leads Ewan McGregor into a hidden world of sex and kidnapping, genius Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s 1930s-set The Lady From Shanghai (again opposite Rachel Weisz), and weirdo Aussie director Baz Lurhmann’s as yet untitled next project, in which Jackman will star alongside fellow antipodean Nicole Kidman. And if that’s not enough, just this week another project has emerged, The Amateur, with Jackman playing a geeky CIA code cracker who turns himself into a killing machine when his wife is killed by terrorists.

At this rate, Jackman could soon see himself making a serious challenge to Russell Crowe and even Mel Gibson as Hollywood’s premiere Australian male – especially if Crowe keeps appearing in dross like A Good Year and Gibson keeps getting drunk and making sexist/racist remarks to police officers…

News: David Bowie

This week’s The Prestige marks a long-overdue return to big screen acting for the near-legendary musician – his first since his hilarious cameo (as himself) in 2001’s Zoolander. As well as his recent appearance (again as himself)  in Ricky Gervais’ second series of Extras, he will soon be voicing a character for the SongeBob SquarePants kids’ cartoon (something he’s described as “The Holy Grail of animation gigs”).

Bowie has, however, already lent his considerable vocal talents to cult French director Luc Besson’s English language part-live action, part-animated childrens’ flick Arthur and the Minimoys. Bowie plays an evil creature in a magical realm (a bit like the camp 80s semi-classic Labyrinth) alongside Charlie and the Chocolate Factory‘s Freddie Highmore, as well as Mia Farrow, Snoop Dogg and Madonna. Set for release in the US in January, a UK date has yet to be confirmed.

News: Andy Serkis

The actor best known for his superb turn as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings is a busy boy these days. After his turn as David Bowie’s sidekick in this week’s The Prestige, his versatile voice will next crop up in next month’s Aardman animation Flushed Away, alongside The Prestige co-star Hugh Jackman, and has plenty more films in the works. He will soon crop up as the sinister Interrogator in the timely Kafkaesque thriller Rendition (which has a great production blog packed with information), before shifting to childrens’ fantasy for Inkheart, an adaptation of the popular Cornelia Funke novel starring Paul Bettany and Brendan Fraser, due 2008.

Serkis is also set to make his feature film directorial debut with Freezing Time, based on the life of pioneering 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge and described as “The tumultuous life of the Godfather of Cinema, his collaboration and conflict with the Governor of California, his trial for the murder of his wife’s con-man lover, and his relentless pursuit of the art of motion pictures”. He will be follwing that with another directing project, an adaptation of the autobiography of Stephen Smith, Addict, a tale of 20 years of drug addiction, crime and a slow descent into poverty and madness.