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'The Illusionist' showcases gifted actors

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The Illusionist" has several tricks up its sleeve, not the least of which is Edward Norton's impeccable performance as a master magician in turn-of-the-century Vienna.

Norton plays Eisenheim, a conjurer whose tricks are so astonishing they border on the uncanny. Make that, the unnerving. Not only can he bring an orange tree to full bloom in seconds and bid butterflies to materialize out of thin air, but it would appear he can summon the spirits of the dead.

Yari Film Group

'The Illusionist'

The verdict: Can't conjure up a proper ending, but otherwise very well done and quite enjoyable.

Director: Neil Burger
Starring: Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell, Eddie Marsan
Run time: 109 minutes
Release date: August 18, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for some sexuality and violence.
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His reputation is such that Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell) attends a performance. Glowering, arrogant and ill-tempered, Leopold is the sort who, when Eisenheim asks for a volunteer who's not afraid of death, volunteers his fiancée, Sophie (Jessica Biel).

Bad move. As it turns out, Eisenheim and Sophie were childhood sweethearts, torn apart by her wealthy parents, who didn't like the idea of their daughter marrying a poor boy of questionable lineage. Thus a dangerous triangle emerges, with a jealous Leopold ordering his men to keep Sophie under surveillance.

Further, after Eisenheim performs an impudent magic trick that humiliates the prince at a private performance, he orders Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) to find some excuse to arrest this cheeky illusionist. The ambitious Uhl wants to please Leopold, but he also admires Eisenheim, being an amateur magician himself.

Part romantic melodrama, part mysticism-tinged murder mystery, the movie looks glorious, with sumptuous costumes, a theater illuminated by flickering gaslight and a hunting lodge straight out of a Grimm's fairy tale. But the denouement, fascinating as it is, doesn't quite live up to the tantalizing promise of the first two-thirds of the film. We've been wondering about ghosts and deadly coverups and a spiritualist movement that threatens to topple the monarchy, and the final explanation is a more complicated version of Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.

Still, the picture sustains the intrigue well enough to make it certainly worth seeing. And it provides a sensational showcase for two of our most gifted actors: Norton, whose dry-ice presence imbues his character with a chilly mystery, and Giamatti, who brings his Everyman touch to the film's most accessible character.

"The Illusionist" ultimately may be nothing more than a lot of smoke and mirrors, but it's always entertaining. And that's something not too many movies have been able to muster recently.