One night, Bale ties a challenging knot, which causes Perabo to drown in a large cube of water. Jackman and Bale split and become magicians with an increasingly bitter rivalry. Caine sticks with Jackman, who hires Scarlett Johansson as his stage assistant. Jackman marries Rebecca Hall, and raise a beautiful post-toddler daughter.
Jackman and Bale sabotage the other's acts, causing permanent injuries to both men. Jackman becomes obsessed with learning the secret to Bale's Transported Man trick, in which Bale disappears from one end of the stage and somehow re-emerges on the opposite end. Jackman implants his hottie assistant, Johansson, as a mole with Bale, to learn the secret.
Instead, Johansson begins an affair with Bale. He has her give Jackman false information that sends him on a wild goose chase to Colorado, to procure from electrical engineering genius Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) a machine that can actually duplicate and transport living objects. Jackman takes the contraption back to England for a sensational act that shows up his archrival Bale.
The plot has more twists and turns than the Texas Giant rollercoaster at Six Flags in Arlington. Instead of revealing which of the two rivals comes out on top, let's just say that it reminds me of the ending in Murder by Death (1976).
How others will see it. Despite its A-list cast and renown director, the box office for The Prestige was underwhelming. The movie was ignored altogether by the Golden Globes and BAFTA, and managed only two Oscar nominations, for its cinematography and art direction.
Nonetheless, at imdb.com, the film has a humongous 816K user ratings at imdb.com. This indicates a tremendously successful video release. The user ratings average 8.5 out of 10, sufficiently lofty to place the movie in the imdb.com Top 50. However, the user ratings decline with advancing age of the viewer, from 8.8 under age 18 to 7.8 over age 45. My belief is that older audiences disapprove of the film's body count, none of which will bring Piper Perabo back to life. Negative user reviews at imdb.com focus on the confusing plot and the unnecessary complication of science fiction plot elements.
How I felt about it. I understand that Nikola Tesla was an advanced man for his era. But to invent, before 1900, a transporter and duplicator of men, is too much for me to accept. Such an invention will never exist, and certainly not merely by electrocuting the hapless subject.
It also seems odd that an identical twin of Christian Bale is revealed in the final moments. Where was this twin when Bale and Jackman were working for Ricky Jay? How did Bale (or one of him) know where Jackman would be, to get the jump on him, and why would it be the floor below where Bale was hanged? What is going on?
It is also odd that Johansson suddenly develops a moral conscience, and dumps Bale. Where was this conscience when Jackman shot off Bale's fingers? Or when she had an affair with Bale, whom she knew had a loving wife?
It also annoys me that Scotland Yard only makes a single arrest during the movie. It is legal to shoot a fellow magician in the hand? Or sabotage a trick to break an innocent woman's fingers? Or kidnap your stage double and bury him alive? And what happens to the all the dead Jackman duplicates? Are they buried at Hyde Park?