The Prestige
Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: October 20, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
9
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
To talk more about the movie's layers is to risk giving away too much. I'll say only that this film confirms Nolan's status as the director whose work I look forward to more than any other. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
A visually stunning, startlingly clever sleight of hand that will have audiences pondering well after the lights go up. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The film's prestige is a doozy, both dazzling and preposterous, but if you're watching closely -- as Cutter advises in the film's first few minutes -- it's flawlessly set up. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
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 full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The Prestige isn't art, but it reaps a lot of fun out of the question, How did they do that? Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
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 full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
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 itself Read full review
80
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
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 full review
80
SlateDana Stevens
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 full review
80
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Take the movie's first words to heart: watch closely. You'll be well rewarded. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Schickel
For all the film's murky misdirections, it is very enjoyable. That's because Nolan's recreation of the illusionists' backstage world is so marvelously detailed, including as it does revelations of how some of their best tricks are accomplished. Read full review
80
EmpireDan Jolin
The Prestige traces the course of their bitter feud, as their respective acts of sabotage become ever more deadly. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Has its moments. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
In the end, there's enough movie magic in The Prestige to keep you guessing, even after the film's over. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
It's like "The Illusionist" crossed with a really hard Sudoku. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Nolan, who has become an assured, stylish filmmaker in the span of only a few films, keeps the complicated plot spinning. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
It's a gorgeous, strange little piece -- but I did find myself wishing it poked fewer aces out its sleeve after urging us to pay such close attention. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
[Nolan is] back in the fine engineering business, crafting a story as intricately designed as a magician's lock, tightly packed with tumblers of deception and issuing a fun challenge to any volunteers in the audience: Just try to pick it. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Christopher Nolan's The Prestige has just about everything I require in a movie about magicians, except ... the Prestige. Read full review
70
Village VoiceScott Foundas
The result is a lopsided yet absorbing movie in which the director is less drawn to his main characters than to those on the periphery. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
For all its surface dazzle, The Prestige shares with this year's earlier "The Illusionist" a certain core hollowness. Maybe that's a natural consequence of even the best magic shows: You can't help but feel duped. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Many, I suspect, will fall for The Prestige and its blend of one-upsmanship and science fiction. I prefer "The Illusionist," the movie that got here first. Read full review
63
PremiereEthan Alter
If The Prestige is something of a let down as a magic trick, it's more successful as a tale of obsession. The rivalry between the magicians is brutal and bloody and Bale and Jackman do their best work when they're plotting each other's downfall. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
By describing the structure of a great trick in a movie about a great trick, The Prestige makes a promise it can't keep. Its third act is about as convincing as a photo of a cow jumping over the moon. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
On the M. Night Shyamalan scale of stupid endings, The Prestige isn't as bad as "The Village" but it's comparable to "Unbreakable." Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
There's plenty going on but never any real magic. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
If you can forgive some woeful casting and a plot that is as creakingly thin as an old staircase, you can enjoy director Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
"The Illusionist" also centers on a 19th-century magician, and the elegant contours of its story are even more impressive compared with Nolan's clutter of double and triple crosses. Read full review
50
Film ThreatMark Bell
When all is said and done and you get the full explanation of what meant what and who did what to whom, it's not fulfilling at all. It's a magic trick that's all showmanship and craft, but lacking true whimsy, ultimately failing the audience. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Jonathan and Christopher Nolan's adaptation of this novel by Christopher Priest offers three acts of exasperating muddle. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The Prestige is a trick box with too many false bottoms. Ultimately, the last one simply gives way -- leaving us with a hole, and a little residual darkness, but not much else. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The tit-for-tat scenario ought to be wildly entertaining, but the magic is crude, the characters flyweight, and the story protracted and unpleasant. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Truth itself is little more than a word in The Prestige, a film that both celebrates the wonder of being fooled and the foolishness of wanting just that. Read full review
40
VarietyDennis Harvey
Clearly, director Nolan is aiming for something else. But the delight in sheer gamesmanship that marked his breakout "Memento" doesn't survive this project's gimmickry and aspirations toward "Les Miserables"-style epic passion. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Thus, we find ourselves watching an ice-cold movie about competition that contains not a shred of rooting interest. Read full review
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