The Illusionist

Nothing is what it seems

A young boy falls in love with a girl that is way above his social standards along with the art of magic. Although the parents forbid them of seeing each other they cannot be split apart. Until one day they were found together and the boy was sent off. He became a magician and traveled the world. She fell in love with another man, the Crown Prince. The two got engaged but the boy, Eisenheim, finally meets back up with the girl and uses his powers to free her from the royal house in Vienna.

-Summary by imdb.com

After reading many good reviews about this movie, I knew this was one of those movies that I just had to see and I was right, this is a must-see.

The story is amazing; it will keep you guessing all the way to the end. The end is very well thought out, and extremely surprising. I was laughing at the sheer genius of it when it finished.

The scenery is all beautiful; the way the camera move is enchanting, practically everything about this movie is ‘Magical’ (No pun intended!). The magic tricks were very cool, extremely enjoyable to watch and most of all original.

And now on the main attraction: the actors. The wonderful actors that have come together to add a special something to the roles and to the flow of the movie, the casting in this movie was one of the best I’ve ever seen, all the actors seemed to fit perfectly into their roles. I strongly believe that if anyone other than Edward Norton had played the role of Eisenheim I wouldn’t have enjoyed the movie as much as I did. Norton was amazing as always, he really is an under-rated actor, he deserves so much more credit than he gets. He went into the role so that it was impossible to even think about the fact that he is an actor playing the role of Eisenheim and not Eisenheim himself. His accent was amazing, and he managed to show his emotions at every scene, I especially loved the scene where he’s reaching for Sophie’s hand nearing the end, and he has tears in his eyes, it was just heart-breaking.

Paul Giamatti also does an excellent job showing exactly how the cop was caught in the middle, and how he was confused and scared at the things he was discovering. Rufus Sewell also does a pretty good job portraying a role not unlike others he’s already played (If I remember correctly he was a knight in ‘A Knight’s tale’), He does have the looks for playing a king and a prince and especially an evil one. Jessica Biel is also quite good, though she is easily over-shadowed by Norton and Giamatti, but she still manages to give a good performance. The chemistry between her and Edward was remarkable.

All in all, I think that everyone will thoroughly enjoy this movie, and be pleasantly surprised at the end (If you don’t think too hard because if you do, you might just spoilt it for yourself!) and absolutely amazed by the wonderful performances the cast, especially Edward Norton give. 9/10