Tricks too much to take in

content="Friday, October 20, 2006">

s most intriguing figures ? fools us to amaze us. We rack our feeble brains to guess how the trick was done.

We want to know; we don?t want to know. The Prestige is the second period film in two months (after The Illusionist) to dramatize master magicians a century ago.

Where The Illusionist was a love story that shamelessly used computer animation to pull off its hero?s supposed feats, The Prestige is forthcoming about the secret apparatuses, trapdoors and body doubles used to dazzle London audiences. (You don?

t want to know how birds are made to disappear.) Even so, the movie is a huge trick in itself ? a flash of narrative misdirection, overlapping time frames, twists and counter-twists that fly at the viewer like playing cards out of a magician?

s loaded sleeves. At times, keeping up with it is too much like work. With Christopher Nolan cowriting and directing, one shouldn?

t expect a sedate narrative. The man behind Memento and Batman Begins deals from every position in his deck. Two master magicians ?

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) ? are locked in a deadly feud to be the premier magician on the London stage. Once they were both apprentices to an older magician; then a tragedy, deliberate or accidental, turned one against the other.

Between developing their own spectacular illusions, they sabotage each other?s performances, one attempt leaving the performer humiliated, another leaving its victim mutilated. Angier is the more polished son) to infiltrate the rival camp.

The plot sounds easy to follow, but Nolan unveils his wrinkles in fractured structure. We learn early that Borden is on trial for murdering Angier; that Angier had stolen Borden?s journal.

Only then does the movie jump back to the accident that made them enemies. The shuffling of events wouldn?t be a problem if Nolan allowed scenes to breathe.

But events past and present are shaved to minimal length and delivered in impatient bursts, as if the movie had been filmed in shorthand. The Prestige (named for an illusion?s final twist that leaves the audience gaping and cheering) is no deep character study, despite the bitterness that drives the rivals.

It is a romantic puzzle picture that might retain too many subplots from Christopher Priest?s original novel. The cast is a major attraction: Jackman and Bale are first-class leads who can play any emotion, and Caine provides a sage presence that tempers the hot blood of the principals.

As a bonus, rocker David Bowie gives an understated performance as reclusive electrical genius Nikola Tesla. The breathless film culminates in a combination of endings told so quickly that a lot of people won?t be quite certain what happened.

A flurry of contradicting evidence might make a magic trick astounding, but it sinks a complex melodrama. fgabrenya@dispatch.com?

performer, but Borden is the more adept practitioner. Borden crafts his own stunts, while Angier devises potent tricks with the help of Cutter (Michael Caine), once a mentor to both men.