That is what I thought...that Costello was a bit deluded about the sanctity of his inner circle .

Ironic in the extreme considering he was playing both ends of the field .

As for ita's comment on Dignan... I can't imagine why he would allow the warehouse shootings to happen if he could have stopped them. Then again, perhaps he didn't care beyond his devotion to the Martin Sheen character. I confess, I'm totally making that up...because I want to have faith in at least one character and because there is no other excuse. Then again, perhaps, like The Bad Lieutenant there simply ARE no good cops in that universe.

P-C, I wanted to love The Prestige so much that I purposely skipped The Illusionist to preserve my magician movie clean slate before seeing it.

I think the best part of it was the conversation it inspired with my compatriots about morality and responsibility. (That and David Bowie and Ricky Jay!) Plus, the conversations I overheard being had by people I would not, on a surface level, have expected.

In retrospect, after saying I was impressed by seeing the darker side of Hugh Jackman. His persona seems to have been used as a device and I can't decide how I feel about it. He's soooo well-loved as an actor and, even as Woverine, has a heart of gold. In this case, his proper behavior and good looks seemed to be manipulated to make the character's cold-blooded nature seem all the more chilling. I have to say, it didn't really work on me.

It's so subtly complex.

I would have said it was frankly complex. Did any of you guess the secret(s) before the reveal? I was pleased to notice that I only was really sure about one of them.

The final twist, that the machine really makes a double, is something that my fellow viewer had a lot of trouble with but which went down easily for me. I suspect it's a matter of "science fiction goggles" -- I'm primed to be comfortable with the tentativeness of universe-rules, whereas he assumed it was real-world right up until the moment it was proved not to be.

Jackman gives good ugly, when he wants to. His body work with the out-of-work actor was a lot of fun to watch. Bale, OTOH, looks like a smoking volcano to me. Every time I saw his face, I was like, any minute now, this hale young man will have a stroke and die.

I really loved seeing how the obsession took over Angier. There was that horrifyingly telling scene where he exclaims that he doesn't care about his wife, he cares about Borden's secret.

I would have said it was frankly complex.

Well, I mean there are all these little things you don't even realize until you stop to think about it. Like how Borden did that door trick when he first meets Sarah. And the fact that the real Angier died the first time he ever performed the trick. And the fact that the birdcage trick foreshadows Angier's trick, and the Chinese man foreshadows Borden's.

As far as figuring out the tricks, I was so intent on believing that Borden had the real magicks because that's what the trailers had led me to believe that I never considered that he simply had a twin. And I didn't think that the fact the machine actually creates a double was a twist. I mean...they showed us the cat and the hats. I think the real twist comes in the horrifying realization that A) the doubles are truly IDENTICAL in that they think of themselves as real, immediately, because they are, essentially, and B) he was killing them off every night.

Did any of you guess the secret(s) before the reveal?

I was one step ahead of most of the secrets, but because there were so many twists, I stayed interested. Plus there were a couple of misdirects. For example, I originally thought that the guy that was dead was Hugh Jackman's drunk double, but I knew he wasn't really dead at that point.

Did any of you guess the secret(s) before the reveal?

Yes, both of them. The mechanics of Angier's trick weren't obvious right away, but when the first lines of the film are "it's not enough to make something disappear, you have to bring it back," there was really no way he was staying dead. And knowing that he was alive, it was then pretty clear that he had to be Lord Cauldler, especially after we find out that (1) Angier isn't his real name and (2) he has a ton of money.

And Borden's secret was pretty obvious after the fourth or fifth Meaningful Close-Up of Fallon's eyes.

I was disappointed, but I've also heard that it's better on rewatch, since if you're not trying to figure out the tricks, you can't be annoyed that you've figured them out before the movie thinks you have.

Like the real Angier died the first time he ever performed the trick.

You think so? I don't think. He died every time -- and didn't. Every copy is exact, whole: they're both Angier, one no more "original" than the other.

My fellow viewer took the bit with the hats and cats as a scam, yet another trick. I just wasn't sure, because I didn't feel sure what the universe-rules were until they were demonstrated right in front of me.

I think the real twist comes in the horrifying realization that A) the doubles are truly IDENTICAL in that they think of themselves as real, immediately, because they are, essentially, and B) he was killing them off every night.

Well, "he" was killing "him" every night -- but who killed whom? If the one thrown out up to the balcony is the "copy," then the version closer to the original was being drowned every time. If they're both the original, whole and intact, then you can get into whole funny arguments about whether it's murder or suicide.

From his point of view, Angier was 50% expecting to die every night. And it never occurred to him that, in fact, he did die every night.

I never considered that he simply had a twin.

I guessed it on an extratextual basis: there were too many scenes that demanded a shot/reverse-shot of Alfred and Fallon speaking to each other, where we never got the reverse shot. I realized after the third or fourth of these that the only reason to omit a close-up on an actor, when convention demands it, is if you are actively concealing that actor's identity. Also, the line of spirit-gum on Fallon's beard was a bit obvious.

I did know pretty quickly that Angier wasn't really dead, for the same line of reasoning Jessica states.

The nice twisty bit I did like regarding the multiple drownings was that the only reason Angier was doing the trick the way he did (as opposed to simply having the original fall onto a bed of spikes or something), was that Michael Caine, at his wife's funeral, had told him that drowning was an easy and comfortable way to die. In his head, he wasn't doing anything cruel, and because the created double never had the memory of the other's death, he had no way of knowing otherwise. I don't think the full horror of it really hit him until the end, when Caine says, "Um, no, dumbass, I just said that to make you feel better. Drowning is painful and horrible."

Agreed, although really, drowning is also a quiet way to die, and one that doesn't require an assistant, and doesn't leave room for fighting back or blood getting everywhere. It's awfully convenient to use. And really, one way or another, the unlucky fellow dies anyway -- that's the depraved part. He could waft him away in a gentle ether dream, but it's still murder.

The question of murder vs. suicide was big in my crowd. Lots of existential agita. And, while I'd like to think that Angier believed the drowning is like going home line, he watched his own wife drown with terror in her eyes, screaming his name. How could he delude himself after that ?

Another interesting question that came up was, Why would Bolton and Fallon switch lovers? If one loved Sarah and the other loved Scarlett, why wouldn't they stay with their respective happy-mates? I guessed that they did this to cover up any potenial 'tells' about there being two Bales. If one sees minor differences with enough consistency, does one's mind forget them?

Also, when Sarah said," I know what you are." Did she mean that she knew there were two Bales? I couldn't quite work that one out.