The Prestige Critic Reviews

A visually stunning, startlingly clever sleight of hand that will have audiences pondering well after the lights go up.Read the full review

Nolan directs the film exactly like a great trick, so you want to see it again the second it's over. I'd call that wicked clever.Read the full review

The Prestige isn't art, but it reaps a lot of fun out of the question, How did they do that?Read the full review

Stuffed with hard-working actors, sleek effects and stagy period details, The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan from a script he wrote with his brother Jonathan, is an intricate and elaborate machine designed for the simple purpose of diversion.Read the full review

Bale and Jackman inject their reliable charisma into two otherwise very cold fish. Okay, I'll say it: If you see only one magic-at-the-turn-of-the-century movie this year, make it this one.Read the full review

The Prestige is utterly without pretense. It doesn't want to explore epistemological questions about the nature of perception and memory; it just wants to mess with our heads. And as a wily, slightly sadistic chess game of a movie, it succeeds quite nicely.Read the full review

The Prestige does more than focus on magicians. It is so in love with the romance, wonder and ability to fool of stage illusion that it becomes something of a magic trick in and of itselfRead the full review

It's like "The Illusionist" crossed with a really hard Sudoku.Read the full review

Christopher Nolan's The Prestige has just about everything I require in a movie about magicians, except ... the Prestige.Read the full review