"Deadly Magic" just by looking at the title can know, this film is absolutely wonderful, and then look at the cast of this film, co-starring two handsome actors Hugh Jackman and Christian Bell, who are very popular with me, and the plot of this film is to describe the process of two magicians played by these two handsome men competing with each other and fighting.
After watching the film, I can simply say that this movie is definitely not just two handsome guys to look at! The whole moment painting of the two people fighting is huge and meticulous, and the description of human nature is also very profound and subtle. The tone of the whole film can be said to be quite black.
First of all, this film uses flashback techniques, but the flashbacks of this film are completely different from the general flashback techniques we commonly use, which adopts a two-track flashback mode, that is, to describe two magicians reading each other's diaries at the same time to trace each other's past memories, and the time and place of the two people reading are different, so in the first half of the film, if you do not pay attention to watch, it is easy to not understand what the movie is saying.
To paraphrase Christian Bell's line from the movie: "Are you watching closely?" It is also because the film adopts this two-track flashback description, allowing the plot to travel back and forth between many different times and places such as the past and the present, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Therefore, the rhythm of the movie is a bit tortuous and slow at the beginning, but as the fighting methods of the two protagonists become more and more intense, the tension of the whole plot gradually rises, in other words, it is more and more exciting and more exciting!
Secondly, the focus of the whole film is on the two magicians who were originally good friends in the early years but later turned against each other, and they constantly fight with each other and hate each other. In the process of revealing each other's magic tricks, both parties use everything to the extreme, and some methods are even very cruel.
For example, when they went to each other's stadiums to kick the stadium, Hugh Jackman shot and broke two fingers of His left hand while Christian Bell performed the "Pick Up Bullets" magic, while Bell broke the fingers of another female audience member on the stage when Hugh Jackman performed the "Birdcage" technique, and later broke his leg when Hugh Jackman performed "Transfiguration".
However, these are not really cruel places. In order to surpass each other to become more powerful magicians, they all sacrificed their friends, relatives, families, sacrificed their normal lives, and finally even sacrificed their own humanity...
In the play, Bell said, "The greatest magic trick is to sacrifice yourself." (The greatest trick is to sacrifice yourself.)" This is definitely the most critical and powerful sentence in the film.
There is a Chinese magician in the play, in order to perform a magic trick to conjure up a goldfish tank, he must pretend to be a cripple in front of everyone for the rest of his life, that is, he will have to play another person for the rest of his life, and he cannot show his true face.
How unbelievable is this kind of sacrifice! The same thing happened later, of course, to the two protagonists. Because, as long as you can win over the other side, everything can be sacrificed, even if you go against your conscience...
And under this unscrupulous, inhumane competition, the whole movie has entered a rather black tone. The cruel truth of the magic show makes the audience look shocking and frightened, and under the beautiful and dazzling magic appearance, the truth inside is often very ugly and even bloody.
Although this film does not have too many bloody shots, it brings you a kind of psychological bloodiness, a psychological shock, and when I see it halfway, I constantly feel that my heartbeat is accelerating, and my chest has a feeling of suffocation, because I began to wonder if there will be another tragedy in the next performance, whether someone will be injured or killed...
The end of the movie is also the most unexpected place, and also creates a very exciting ending for this rather suspenseful movie, that is, the secret behind the top techniques of the two magicians is revealed at the end!
First of all, after Bell was executed, Hugh Jackman discovered that Bell and his mechanic Faron were actually twins, and the two twins often exchanged identities to live each other's lives, which is the secret of Bell's "transfiguration" magic trick - to make his twin brothers stand-ins!
It also makes us understand why Bell has always liked to say "Half of me... And the other half of me..." He said this in response to Hugh Jackman's original tie, and when arguing with his wife, which explained why he said to the acting assistant, his mistress, after her death, about her wife: "Do you believe it? In fact, I didn't love her at all..."
Because of these two brothers, one fell in love with his wife, and the other fell in love with his assistant. This shows the intentions of the screenwriter, the whole film is full of clues, and the final ending has all the clues strung together.
Then, even more shocking is Hugh Jackman's secret, that after getting the machine of the American inventor, he uses the machine that fills the current and will completely copy things to perform a magic show, and he must kill himself once per performance. Although I had already guessed this secret for a long time, the shock in my heart when I actually saw the storage room full of dead bodies was indescribable.
And finally, Hugh Jackman's last words before his death tell the reason why magicians are fascinated by magic is the expression on the faces of the audience after the performance of the technique, which is the biggest driving force that drives them to the road of no return - to become famous! Just to become famous, their humanity has been severely distorted.
To sum up, the whole movie gives people a considerable sense of oppression, these two magicians sacrifice themselves to the point of almost perverting in order to change magic, and finally even twist their own humanity.
Two promising young people who were originally full of ideals for magic, but later became two magicians who went crazy, and the final result was actually that both sides lost, because there is a proverb in the West that says it well: "Even if you get the whole world, but you lose yourself, then what do you get?" This sentence may be the best footnote of this film...