Sometimes it’s worth getting to the point straight away with a film review, and laying your cards on the table. This is a wonderful film.

Directness, though, is not what this film or its subject are about. This is a film that twists and turns, tricks and thrills, like any good magic show should.

Hmm. Have I lost you already? The mention of magic tricks? If, like me, you grew up in the seventies, forced to watch terrible ‘variety shows’ where there was always some smug member of the magic circle, eagerly peddling his wares with all the panache of a second-hand car-salesman, then the very mention of magic show will have you running for the aisles. Well, the presence of actors like Michael Caine, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, and Scarlet Johannsen should give you pause, and the fact that the film was written, and directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, and Batman Begins), should force you to give the conjuring tricks the benefit of the doubt.

The film opens with a murder trial. A leading magician in Victorian England is in the dock for having murdered his rival. Two hours, and a myriad of twists, turns, flashbacks and tricks later, a compelling story about competition, technology, and vengeance has been told.

The movie’s title, and structure essentially comes from a dissection of any magic trick. The first part of a trick is ‘the pledge’, where you’re invited to examine the object which will be transformed by the trick – an ordinary common place thing, in this case a murder. We see it from the traditional view point: the man in the dock, the guilty verdict, and the fade into flashback. The generic premise of a thousand and one films before. We’re quickly introduced to two apprentice magicians, Robert Angier (Jackman), and Alfred Borden (Bale), working under the watchful eye of Cutter (Caine). A premise for deadly rivalry is set up, and off we go.

The next stage in any good trick is ‘the turn’, or where things get weird and interesting. Amidst repeated and intricate double-crossing, Angier heads to the United States, to consult with the acclaimed physicist Nikolai Tesla (a particularly weird and wonderful performance from David Bowie), in order to construct the greatest magic trick of all time, the transported man, and at the same time to plot the ultimate downfall of Borden. One of the key strengths of the film shines through at this stage – the combination of revealing the structural tricks behind common magic stunts (you’ll never look at a trick involving doves the same way again), while at the same time obscuring the plot’s impending twists and turns.

The final part of the trick is where we get the movie’s title, ‘the prestige’. As Caine’s character Cutter explains, any magician can make something dissapear. The real part of the trick is bringing it back again. The last segment of the film turns back in on the story, revealing the fundamental how’s in a series of revelations that, in the hands of a less confident director, would stretch incredulity to breaking point.

Nolan’s choices are what makes the film. The pacing, teasing, and revelation of the story all sit perfectly. The film is based on the novel, by Christopher Priest, but with important differences, for example, the novel has a modern day framing device, where the magicians’ great grandchildren investigate the famous rivalry.

For a film like this to work, like a magic trick, there’s a need for the audience to sit poised between feeling clever enough to have worked out some of how the trick has been done, feeling satisfied that what has been pulled off is extraordinary, and curious enough to want to immediately see the act again. This gem of a movie wins on all fronts.