Cast delivers charisma, intensity in The Prestige

Directing an exciting thriller is a lot like performing a successful magic trick. In order to surprise and amaze the audience with the ending, you must ensure that they focus on the right hand holding the handkerchief while the left hand makes the coin "disappear."

Writer and director Christopher Nolan knows this and was able to astound and mystify the crowd with his new film, The Prestige.

Nolan is no stranger to dramatic thrillers, directing both Memento and Insomnia, two films which kept crowds guessing until the end.

For this film, Nolan teamed up with his brother, Jonathan, to adapt the book of the same name to the silver screen. The result is a plot with incredibly strong character development that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat from the beginning to the end.

You could have the greatest script in the world, though, and it would not be worth anything without strong actors.

Luckily, The Prestige has the strongest cast of any film this year, with the notable exception of the newest Scorsese film, The Departed.

The film reunites Nolan with Christian Bale and Michael Caine. Alongside these two Batman Begins actors are Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie.

Bale and Jackman share the spotlight as two competing magicians in nineteenth century London. Bale portrays the intense and introspective Alfred Borland, who loves magic for magic's sake but lacks the charisma to be a successful stage act. Hugh Jackman provides a counterpoint with the theatrical and exuberant Rupert Angier, who has the presence, despite using old, run-of-the-mill tricks. Bale shows that he has the dark, brooding act down to an art, and Jackman's own experience in theater helped immensely with his scripted stage presence.

The supporting cast is nothing to scoff at either. Caine provides a mentor role in Cutter, a man who invents tricks for stage magicians. He manages to steal the spotlight right out from under the two leads in every scene he is in. Johansson plays a beautiful, seductive magician's assistant, Olivia Wenscombe, and David Bowie is so convincing as Nikola Tesla that he's nearly unrecognizable.

The story is told using a unique blend of flashbacks and excerpts from both magicians' journals to provide underlying thoughts and motivations.

While this does become confusing at some points, it is a different and effective means to develop characters while moving the plot along.

The movie opens with Borden and Angier serving as assistants for a popular magician.

However, an unfortunate accident occurs onstage that results in the death of Angier's wife, played by Piper Perabo, and Angier blames Borden. The plot unfolds as Angier attempts to exact revenge on Borden, and Borden responds in kind.

The film escalates the excitement to the last moment with an ending no one could guess. This is one movie you do not want to know the ending of before you see it.

Despite all my raving about character development, it is reserved almost exclusively for the main characters. The female characters receive almost no attention that would give them any sort of depth. In fact, Johansson's character seems to disappear near the end of the film, with no explanation of where she went.

This small quibble is barely noticed, though, thanks to the film's many strengths. Bale gives a performance that is a shoe-in for the Oscars. The Nolan brothers wrote a script that creates two characters that you both love and hate. And it has one of the best twists outside of a M. Night Shyamalan film.

This movie is like a dessert buffet: there may be one or two things you do not like, but you will love everything else.