'The Prestige' a neat trick

Those who saw his first major movie, Memento, know that director Christopher Nolan enjoys the kind of cinematic sleight of hand that keeps an audience reeling. In his new movie, The Prestige, Nolan again tries to pull us into a stream of events that feel way beyond our control. Fine, you say, but what's with the title?

First know that Nolan has adapted a 1995 novel by Christopher Priest, an intricately plotted tale about two feuding magicians in Victorian England. A "prestige," we learn from both book and movie, is part of a magic trick, the climactic moment when we're wowed by something we've never seen before. For the record, the other parts are "the pledge" (the magician shows us something interesting but familiar) and "the turn" (the magician transforms the ordinary into something unusual).

Working from a script co-written with his brother Jonathan, Nolan attempts to follow the structure of a magic trick as he whips up a strange tale of jealousy and deception. He invites us to "watch carefully" and then tries to outsmart us. In prying open the door to a world normally hidden from us, Nolan delivers a movie in which the complexity of plot sometimes exceeds the complexity of the ideas.

Still, he manages to create some captivating cinematic magic along the way. If acting qualifies as another kind of magical illusion, the two lead actors don't disappoint. The magicians are portrayed by Christian Bale, who starred in Nolan's Batman Begins, and Hugh Jackman.

Although both magicians share an interest in illusion, they hail from vastly different backgrounds. Bale's Alfred Borden rose from London's lower classes. He's a natural when it comes to magic but has little sense of showmanship.

Jackman's Robert Angier, on the other hand, understands theatrics but lacks Alfred's facility with magic. Bale brings fervor to his role. Anyone who has seen The Machinist, in which the actor reduced himself to near-skeletal proportions, knows he's an all-business actor.

Jackman holds up his end as a character who eventually works with an assistant (Scarlett Johansson), a character who becomes increasingly involved in advancing the plot. (After the Woody Allen movie Scoop, in which Allen played a magician, and now The Prestige, Johansson should swear off magicians. These haven't been her best roles.

) A death that occurs during a performance turns what might have been a friendly rivalry into something more dangerous. All this occurs under the watchful eye of Cutter (Michael Caine), a man who designs tricks for magicians and serves as the movie's narrator. Bits of additional narration from both magicians supplement observations delivered by the always-reliable Caine.

All this helps give the movie an intimate feeling as we move through a world in which everything can seem foreign and exotic. Credit fine production design that returns us to a time when interest in applied science and magic both seemed to be at a peak. If all its illusions, deceptions and dodges weren't enough, the script also travels to Colorado Springs, where Jackman's Angier seeks help.

He visits Nikola Tessla (David Bowie), a character based on a real historical figure, a man known for early experiments with electricity. Angier hopes to unravel secrets to one of his rival's more incredible feats. Intriguing as the movie can be, its prestige - i.

e., its payoff - doesn't quite have the hoped-for kick. I'd say Nolan pulls the rabbit three-quarters of the way out of the hat.

Still, I love the fact that he takes us behind the scenes to expose most (but not all) of the trickery. In the end, he leaves us wondering about some of the movie's developments, which can seem a little murky. We're led to believe that this just might be the point of both magic tricks and movies: Both add mystery to our sometimes-prosaic lives.

Both catch us up for a moment. Neither should be fully explained.