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Let me get it out of the way first: The Illusionist shares plenty of similarities with The Prestige. On these shores it's destined to forever be compared to Christopher Nolan's excellent duelling magicians film, but in the US, The Illusionist was released first. Whichever way round they are watched, though, they definitely are different films, but both fortunately are well worth seeing. The Illusionist makes full use of its Czech Republic locations (doubling for Austria), and the whole film is bathed in a golden hue making it seem like a sepia-tinged archive film, while still remaining absolutely stunning to look at. The old-fashioned feel starts off with a very traditional credits sequence, accompanied by Philip Glass' excellent score. The first part of the film deals with the childhood of Edward Norton's character and to me felt like a rather clunky chunk of exposition, but it was crucial to the love story of the film, which provides most of its narrative drive. I found the majority of the film pretty gripping thanks to an interesting plot and good acting. As you'd expect from a film about a stage magician, the plot pulls the rug out from under you a couple of times. Generally when I watch a film there seems to be a correlation between how absorbed I am in a film and how unpredictable I find the plot twists (I often fail to see them coming if I'm really enjoying a film, because I'm too engrossed to think about what will happen next) and the final reveal of this film proved to be one of the best third act twists I've seen in a long time. The main reason for this was despite the fact I failed to predict it, in hindsight it did make perfect sense. It's not one of those ludicrous twists that are just put in to fool you and have no basis in logic; it's actually one that improves the film once you know it. At points in the second half of the film my interest slightly dwindled but then I realised it was all set-up for the final twist, which was extremely satisfying.
The summary
The Illusionist is a well-paced, engaging romantic mystery with an excellent ending. Just don't try to figure out the twist before you see it.
