'Watch closely.' The brain teasing pleasure in Christopher Nolan's film about rival magicians at the dawn of the modern age is in watching such deft and clever cinematic sleight of hand performed before your eyes.

It's a wonderful trick inside of a trick, as Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, in league with a gifted director, play mind games with their onscreen audiences, with each other, and with the viewers of The Prestige.

In the waning years of the 1800's, two ambitious magicians are in the employ of an aging illusionist named Milton, but they chafe at the restrictions of safe and traditional tricks and yearn to push the limits of what is possible.

When a tragic death turns them into bitter enemies and ruthless rivals, a deadly game of one-upsmanship leads each to discover how far they are willing to go to claim the prizes at stake: their own exaltation as ultimate legends of magic, and the destruction of the other.

A brilliantly placed piece of this masterful puzzle comes in the person of Nikola Tesla, the gifted and revolutionary scientist whose research into the nature and uses of electricity led to a real-life rivalry with Thomas Edison. David Bowie as Tesla is fascinatingly enigmatic in a small but key role in the story. The way in which Tesla's career and his sometimes seemingly mystical inventions parallel the crucial twists of plot lends an imaginative sense of historic possibility to the film.

The A-list cast is excellent, as expected. Scarlett Johanssen is fine as an English girl who becomes a player in the magician's dangerous game, but Rebecca Hall as the wife of Christian Bale's Alfred Borden is the female standout, returning to acting after a decade long absence.

Like Memento, The Sixth Sense and other similarly woven stories of maze-like complexity, The Prestige will yield a new appreciation for its style and cleverness upon second viewings. But like a well performed illusion, the pleasure is first and foremost about the sense of being in the presence of magic.

Who knows which secrets? Who is tricking whom? And ultimately, what is possible in life, in magic and in the human heart? These are the multilayered and irresistible questions that lie at every turn of The Prestige.

The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan
produced by Touchstone Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures.

Starring:
Hugh Jackman
Christian Bale
Rebecca Hall
Michael Caine
Scarlett Johansson
David Bowie
Andy Serkis
Piper Perabo
Ricky Jay as Milton the Magician