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Cutter is vintage Michael Caine with his customary commitment to role as the mentor to both at the beginning but mainly to Angier as the story develops. Rarely ruffled and always in control, Caine gives his ever reliable back up to the leads in a relentlessly professional manner that's become the hallmark of his individual trade. Scarlett Johannson pops up as the mutual love interest adding glamour on screen and providing yet another human bridge to connect and confuse the relationship between the two antagonists. With a cameo from David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, this is a powerful cast put together to deliver a fantastic (in the literal sense of the word) storyline.

What works well in the movie are both the quality of the acting throughout along with a plot that grips the viewer, taking them on a convoluted journey of secrecy, despair, hatred and real magic. Nolan's ability to string together different plot strands into a coherent story isn't lost on this movie although younger viewers may find it more challenging than most (my 11-year-old lad found it very difficult to keep up!). Nolan's interpretation of Victorian London adds to the allure of the story with an attention to detail through sets and costume that lend an authenticity that adds to the quality of the tale told. There is also an intriguing insight into how some of the feats of illusion are performed, often with a touch of cruelty, never better brought home than when a young boy bursts into tears when watching a magic act on stage and realising how the trick has been performed. With a David Julyan incidental musical score and an eclectic soundtrack, the Victoriana theme is brought to life and allowed to run underneath the movie theme throughout the plotline. What takes the film into the realms of out and out fantasy is the sub-plot around Bowie's Tesla and his scientific discoveries around static electricity. Hounded by Thomas Edison's men trying to bring the enigmatic Tesla to book as a charlatan, Tesla's invention provides the heart of the second half of the movie taking the, until now, theme of magic realism into a whole new world of science and magic meeting in a twilight zone that we know may be there as an audience although we aren't quite sure in the same way that we think we know how a feat of illusion has been performed but prefer not to know subconsciously.

If I have a criticism of the movie its simply that there are too many twists. With the closing reels looking trickier than an eel dipped

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