The Prestige Reviews

Watching The Prestige is like observing a magic act where the magician's sleight-of-hand isn't deft enough. The trick almost works, but not quite.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The Prestige gets to be a bit of a grind after a while, despite all the finery and the elegantly detailed atmosphere.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Risible inanity

Full Review

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

Underneath the film's tantalizing stratagems lies little more than mundane truths.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

What The Prestige and filmmaker Nolan seem to have forgotten about magic is the very important element of misdirection. Without misdirection, an audience is bound to discover the trick and not be impressed.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10

The film's title is defined as the big finish to a magic trick, but the prestige of The Prestige just lies there like an abracadaver.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

In a movie about people who make their livings on misdirection, The Prestige utterly forgets to employ its own.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

'The Prestige' is one of those weird movies that plays better in memory than it does on the screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Though mostly a leaden affair, it has its few diversionary magical moments.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

Parts of the film really stand out, but taken as a whole, it's a labyrinth of conflicting ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

By describing the structure of a great trick in a movie about a great trick, The Prestige makes a promise it can't keep. Its third act is about as convincing as a photo of a cow jumping over the moon.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Unfortunately the script is too smart for its own good.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Siblings Jonathan and Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the novel by Christopher Priest offers three acts of exasperating muddle.

| Original Score: 2/4

Director Nolan's fascination with magic and with tricks in general comes through without question, but he approaches the subject with a seriousness that soon turns grim.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

It's a magic trick that's all showmanship and craft, but lacking true whimsy, ultimately failing the audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Despite good acting and direction, the dénouement in the film was so feeble it rendered the entire movie meaningless.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10

Nolan has nothing special up his sleeve in this hazy smoke-and-mirrors drama, especially in Jackman's climactic trick that's too sci-fi and fantastic to be believed.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

... this odd tale about obsessive Victorian-era magicians and their blood feud isn't nearly as enchanting as it should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The PrestigeH is infused with faux intellectualism -- it pretends to be more cerebral than it really is, when all it really wants to do is be the new Sixth Sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Full Review