Top 250

The Prestige (2006)
Number 150 on IMDb's Top 250

Hilarity ensues in a mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences. From the time that they first met as young magicians on the rise, Robert Angier "The Great Danton" (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden "The Professor" (Christian Bale) were competitors. However, their friendly competition evolves into a bitter rivalry making them fierce enemies-for-life and consequently jeopardizing the lives of everyone around them while they search for the ultimate magic trick, the Transporting Man. Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London.

Trivia: Nikola Tesla is the only real character in this movie. He is a world-renowned inventor, physicist, and engineer. He did in fact at one point in time have a lab in Colorado Springs where he conducted electrical experiments. Besides being a brilliant scientist, he was also known for his eccentric behavior. In the Bullet Catching Scene you can clearly see the name Harry Dresden on the list of performers under Christian Bale's "The Professor." Harry Dresden is a fictional wizard in a series of books, "The Dresden Files", by novelist Jim Butcher. Angier's double mumbles a few lines from a speech while rehearsing on stage before his first performance. What he's saying is actually the words of Harry Percy (Hotspur) from Shakespeare's Henry IV, when called to appear before the king and explain his failure to turn over prisoners after a recent battle in Scotland. Apparently Hugh Jackman has used this speech in previous auditions. Presumably it was believed that having the double deliver a few lines from Shakespeare would lend him an actorly air, as his character is in fact a dissolute stage actor. Chung Ling Soo was a stage character created by a Caucasian American man, William Ellsworth Robinson, who disguised himself as a Chinese man to cash in on audiences' enthusiasm for the exotic. Robinson lived as Chung, never breaking character while in public. He died in March 1918 when a bullet catch trick went wrong. "My God, I've been shot" were both his last words and the first English he had spoken on stage in 19 years.

This movie was doing great...until the twist on the twist on the twist at the end. The tale of jelousy mixed with dispair mixed with murderous hatred that the Great Danton goes through was facinating and the final lengths that he went through to out peform the Professor was bone chilling, but the actual mechanism that is used to do it just leave you wondering "what the heck?" It was a good movie and the ending really does fit into the story, they just stretched the plot to it's breaking point and I think they then took another step.