It's magician vs. magician in 'Prestige'

Now you don't see them, now you do. On the heels of ``The Illusionist," the season's surprise hit, comes a second tale of period legerdemain. Ironically, doubles are at the heart of ``The Prestige," which sets two magicians at each other ' s throats in a decade-long battle for supremacy. It's like ``The Illusionist" crossed with a really hard Sudoku.

Fun? Yes, even when the machinery of betrayal and counter-betrayal gets overly busy. Based on the 1995 novel by Christopher Priest, ``The Prestige" has been directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan, and it's very much the work of the man who gave us 2000's ``Memento." There are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks here, and not all of them tell the truth.

The setting is Victorian London, and the first thing we see is well-known magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) slip backstage and queer the act of his rival, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) . Angier drowns, Borden is tried, and in prison he is given the dead man's diary, which unleashes the film's back-story.

The mutual vendetta began, we learn, following an onstage tragedy in the two men's youth. Each subsequently vows to best the other in magic and in life: Borden has the skill, Angier has the showmanship, and their loved ones can only look on aghast. These include Rebecca Hall as Borden's increasingly confused wife, Scarlett Johansson as a stage assistant whose heart may or may not belong to both men, and Michael Caine, cackling from the sidelines as the creator of the stage tricks that dazzle the multitudes.

Eventually Borden debuts a number called ``The Transported Man," which drives Angier into a fit of jealousy. His obsession leads him -- why not? -- to the Colorado Springs laboratory of Nikola Tesla, inventor of AC current and himself a rival of Thomas A. Edison. In one of the movie's most felicitous appearing acts, Tesla is played by David Bowie, who acts as if it's perfectly normal for him to be here. Even better: his assistant is played by Andy Serkis -- Gollum of ``The Lord of the Rings , " finally allowed to take human shape.

This is grand, half-crazy fun, and Jackman and Bale are committed to their parts: Genuine madness glints in their eyes. (Johansson, by contrast, appears to have been cast to fill out that eensy-weensy assistant's costume; this is not criticism.) ``The Prestige" begins to spin out of the director's control around this time, though. One shadowy character in particular is easy to identify; once you tumble to that, the game's up.

Worse, ``The Prestige" doesn't play fair to a fundamental rule of the magician-movie genre: That everything that occurs must be physically possible. An element of sci-fi is introduced at a crucial juncture, and while it takes the movie to an interesting (if weird) level, it's hard to shake the sense that someone is cheating.

The title is theater slang referring to the third part of a magic trick. The set-up is called The Pledge, the initial ruse The Turn. The Prestige is the twist that sends you home gobsmacked . Nolan has the first two down perfectly , but the finale requires more sleight of hand than even this skilled prestidigitator can manage.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.