Running time: 130 mins . . .

ALL cinema is illusion. For the magic to work, the audience must be tricked into suspending disbelief. Orson Welles always thought of himself as a magician.

Christopher Nolan belongs in this tradition. His debut, Memento, was a statement of intent, a thriller told backwards that played tricks with memory.

So it's easy to see why he was attracted to Christopher Priest's novel about rival turn-of-thecentury magicians who engage in a lethal duel to decide who's best.

Back then magicians were the equivalent of rock stars. They packed out theatres with their stunts, which increasingly involved technical gadgetry.

Nolan's trick is to let us in on their secrets while holding back on his own, giving us the illusion we know everything that's going on while of course we don't.

The Prestige is an elaborate piece of magic, the implications of which only become apparent at the end. As with all good tricks, Nolan employs women to divert attention from what's really going on. First it's gorgeous Piper Perabo who, early on, with her husband Hugh Jackman and apprentice Christian Bale, works for an ageing magician. When she drowns in a glass container during an act, Jackman blames Bale, claiming he tied her wrists with a knot that couldn't be opened. Whether true or not, it triggers an obsessive rivalry as they go to develop careers, each with a spectacular signature act.

Enter Rebecca Hall as Bale's trusting wife who can't understand why some days he adores while other days he treats her as if she doesn't exist.

Meanwhile Scarlett Johansson has become Bale's assistant.

Apart from featuring in his acts, he sends her to spy on Jackman who, with the help of Michael Caine and an eccentric inventor . . .

a real-life figure played by David Bowie . . . has developed a trick involving highly-charged electric beams. So that's the set-up. The trouble is there's so much tomfoolery it's hard to find any heart in the characters, except perhaps Rebecca Hall. A good magician never reveals his secrets. Nolan is so caught up in his tricks he seems to have forgotten to come up with something really worth revealing.