Spoiler
hidden text
You know it’s one thing to watch a movie and realize that it was totally worth it. This movie came highly recommended and I decided to try it out and to be honest, I wasn’t disappointed at all. Like you know when you know something is a lie or possibly a lie but your brain can’t just phantom the logic behind it and the mystery becomes intriguing? This movie takes that feeling and turns it into something darker, imagine when two men take winning or getting better so seriously that even when they are winning it looks like they are losing, that was how intense it was.
This movie tells the story of two magicians Robert Angier and Alfred Borden who just happened to be colleagues but their closeness falls apart after a performance goes wrong. Angier’s wife drowns during a performance, and Angier blames Borden for it. The fact that he couldn’t remember some specific details made it even worse, like how can a grown ass man forget specific details like that. This became the origin of their fight and that was how two great performers became two great rivals. Angier knows how to carry and command the crowd, while Borden understands the mechanics behind illusions which makes both of them damn good magicians.
For Angier the grief of his wife's death becomes what fuels his passion and performance, while Borden was just a natural genius. Their competition became so intense that they were sabotaging each other's work and even costing each other's lives in the process. At a point Borden lost two fingers because Angier sabotaged his trick and Angier suffered a serious leg injury after Borden took his revenge. Borden began to develop new tricks especially one that makes him teleport or look like he teleported and Angier could not understand how he was doing it.
This drives Angier so mad that he was looking for every means to get the secrets to that trick so he doesn’t feel that Borden is better than him. He finally ends up meeting someone who invented a duplicating machine which for Angier looks like an answered prayer. Angier would use this machine to duplicate himself and kill the duplicate but unknowing to him Borden was an Identical twin, a secret that even Borden’s wife did not know. At the end of the day Angier ends up framing Borden for his own death after Borden discovers his duplication trick and that leads to the execution of one of the twins. This was just one of many ways their rivalry became chaotic and others suffered the cost of it.
Rating 95/100
Images by IMDB
Rating: 95/100
