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In almost every way, the two men are opposites: Angier is upper class, poised, more a gifted showman than an inspired illusionist; Borden, a Cockney, is working-class and unpolished, but with a deep affinity for the art that eludes his rival. Their rivalry takes various forms: direct acts of revenge and sabotage, efforts to upstage one another's careers, elaborate coded messages taunting one another, even affairs with the same woman, Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), who acts as assistant and double agent to both men.

Angier's hatred for Borden over their shared history deepens into envy and resentment over the latter's apparent domestic happiness; later, discovering that Borden isn't really the settled family man he seems to be, Angier despises his rival even more.

Is Borden too much in love with magic to give himself completely to his wife Sarah (Rebecca Hall)? Or is the problem more complicated than that? Sarah quizzically eyes her husband when he tells her he loves her. "Not today," she says with resigned acceptance. She can always tell: Some days, she's convinced he loves her more than magic; other days it's the other way around. She seems willing to live with this part-time love, though it hurts even on the good days, when he tells her he loves her and means it: "It makes it that much harder when you don't."

Most infuriatingly to Angier, Borden develops an astounding trick that no one can explain or duplicate. Called "The Transported Man," the effect is so simple that audiences are almost too bewildered to know how to respond. Angier, of course, could dress it up better—if he could do it at all.

Michael Caine as Cutter

Cutter (Michael Caine), a veteran ingeneur or designer of illusions with whom both rivals work at various times, swears there's no way to do the trick without a body double—but Angier would stake his life that it's the same man. Eventually, with Cutter's help, Angier debuts a slicker version of "The Transported Man," but the effect is less than satisfactory, especially to Angier himself. Increasingly obsessed with learning Borden's secrets, Angier eventually puts up his assistant and mistress Olivia to go to work for Borden in order to steal his secrets.

Somewhat oddly juxtaposed with all this, yet inseparable from it, is a subplot involving a historical figure, American scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), an important inventor and physicist whose own rivalry with an accomplished peer, Thomas Alva Edison, is alluded to in the film. (Edison championed direct current, but Tesla's alternating current standard was superior, and won out.)

Angier and Borden each make pilgrimages to Tesla's Colorado Springs workshop to petition the scientist to build an extraordinary machine for their magic acts. It is here that the film threatens to break down: Tesla's reputation as a "wizard" of science notwithstanding, his presence in the film, and the machine he builds, isn't successfully integrated into the fabric of the story.

In spite of this incongruity, Nolan makes it pay off, in spades. The device itself doesn't fit into the world of the story, but what the characters do with it does. It's a story flaw, but a flaw that has been turned to advantage, like a crack in a marble slab that the sculptor somehow finds a way to make serve the statue.

If only the characters themselves were more interesting, or even more likeable. If only the story had something decent at its center, rather than being a tightly wound Möbius strip with a dark side that just keeps going and has no other side.

1. Both Angier and Borden do very immoral things. Do you think either is more compromised than the other? Does the balance go back and forth
2. Does the movie sympathize more with one rival than the other? If so, do the movie's sympathies correlate in any way to the moral standing of the characters

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