Saw this movie with CDMCC a weekend or two ago. Movie turned out to be really good. Although I was disappointed with one thing and that’s why I gave it an 8 instead of a 9. You’ll have to read the spoilers section you want to find out what. Movie was done really well and I’ve always been a fan of magic tricks, so that made it even better.
Official Site
IMDb: 8.1/10 (17,081 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users:B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 73% / Average Rating: 7.1/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com Showtimes
Amazon.com Soundtrack
MY RATING: 8/10
Spoilers: (Show)
So throughout the whole movie, there were 2 tricks you had to figure out. One was how Christian Bale was able to do the teleportation trick. The other was Hugh Jackman does his version of the teleportation trick. I always seem to call Hugh Jackman, Jack Hugh. Haha.
Anyway, the story starts off with Bale witnessing Jackman’s drowning and was then convicted in court for murdering him. Then in a series of flashbacks, the story is told how they used to be friends and then became rivals. It all starts when Bale does this trick called the Teleportation Man and Jackman needs to find out how he does it, that he even sends in a spy. He gets ahold of Bale’s notebook and then goes to Tesla’s laboratory and begs him to make a similar machine that he had made for Bale.
Story goes on and things heat up on both sides.
So the trick I figured out was the fact that Bale was using a double, and the double was his manager, the chubby one with a mustache, beard, and glasses. However, it later turns out it was his actual twin. A common saying throughout the movie was that for a magic trick to be successful, your whole life revolves around the show, and these twin brothers would share the time on stage and share each other’s life. This also mean they’ll share each other’s love life and that was why his wife would say half the time he says he loves her, he’d mean it and that’s why when the manager got buried, he gave up Tesla and began digging crazily to unbury him.
The Jackman trick was what I was disappointed with. I thought Bale gave Tesla to Jackman as a another lie, and Jackman was wasting his time with Tesla. Even when Tesla showed a whole bunch of top hats and black cats, I thought he was trying to trick Jackman into believing the machine can clone. So each night, he would jump in and drown himself, while a clone of him would appear on the balcony, until the night he sees Bale come on stage and sneak into the basement and that’s when his final performance would be. CDMCC figured out this trick before I did, but I guess I was trying hard NOT to believe it was really cloning and there’s really another illusion here, because it’s no longer really a trick.
