The Prestige

One of the things I like so much about the new Heroes TV show is that the writers are constantly surprising me. But they’re doing it in the right way, not the cheap way that Lost keeps pulling—by leading you in one direction and deliberately messing with your mind once you’ve figured out where the writers are going. Heroes is simply peeling away the layers and making its heroes and villains multidimensional, which makes them hard to predict, which keeps the show interesting. And that is something I absolutely prefer in my TV shows: If they’re not interesting, I stop watching. Predictable? Yawn.

The thing is, I also have the kind of mind that tends to spoil surprises. Only once in my life have my friends successfully thrown me a surprise party, and that’s because I’d convinced myself that it was going to be at my brother’s house the next day, not at my friend’s house that night. Every other one I’ve managed to walk in on early or figure out was being thrown for me. That goes for major movie plotlines, too, for the most part. The Sixth Sense? I had it long before the end. Picked up on it during the scenes with Bruce Willis’ wife in the restaurant.

So tonight, I was watching The Prestige, and about 40 minutes into it was debating whether I wanted to keep watching, because it seemed to be turning into an ugly little film about a vengeance fight between two men who, even though being played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, had little to appeal to me. But I stuck with it, and then the plot started to pull me into it, and then it just grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let me go. And the ending—well, that one was the biggest mindf*ck ending I’ve seen since the Sixth Sense. I figured out one part of the twist, and I thought I had the other part figured out. But then it turned out there were twists within twists within twists, and at the final scene, I just said, “Oh my God!” and sat there, slack-jawed, as the credits rolled.

It’s the kind of film that needs digesting before you can recommend it to a friend, but then, a film that makes you think about it like that is generally the kind of film you’d recommend to a friend.

I think I may have to start reading some Christopher Priest novels. Damn, that movie was good.