The Prestige

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are plants for Milton the Magician (Ricky Jay), with Cutter (Michael Caine) as his illusion engineer. Angier's wife, Julia (Piper Perabo) drowns while performing a predicament escape from a Chinese water torture cell, and Angier suspects that Borden bound her wrists with a new knot that he had suggested to Cutter before—one harder for her to undo than his customary one. At the funeral, Borden enrages Angier by saying he does not know which knot he tied.

The two men begin separate careers as magicians; Borden becomes "The Professor" and hires an engineer named Fallon, while Angier performs as "The Great Danton" with Cutter and Olivia (Scarlett Johansson) as his assistants. During a parlor magic job, Borden meets Sarah (Rebecca Hall); they marry and have a daughter, Jess. Sarah feels uneasy about Borden and his apparent fickleness; she claims to know when he loves her and when he does not. During Borden's performance of the bullet catch, a disguised Angier again demands to know which knot Borden used. Borden and Fallon quickly realize Angier is going to shoot at Borden with a loaded gun. At the last second, Fallon intervenes, and the bullet severs two of Borden's fingers instead of killing him. A disguised Borden later sabotages Angier's performance of the vanishing bird cage illusion, damaging Angier's reputation.

Borden soon astonishes crowds with "The Transported Man", in which he bounces a ball across the stage before stepping through a door and instantly reappearing from a second door on the opposite side of the stage to catch the ball. The new illusion amazes Angier and Olivia. Obsessed with beating Borden, Angier hires a double and steals Borden's trick, with a slight variation, as "The New Transported Man". The double enjoys the applause while Angier can only listen from below stage. Unhappy at missing the applause and obsessed with figuring out Borden's version of the teleportation illusion, Angier sends Olivia to steal Borden's secrets. Although Olivia provides Angier with Borden's enciphered diary, she falls in love with Borden and double-crosses Angier, allowing Borden to sabotage Angier's act, permanently crippling Angier's left leg by removing a crash mat. In return, Angier and Cutter capture Fallon and bury him alive inside a coffin, revealing his location to Borden in exchange for the key to Borden's illusion. Before rushing to dig out Fallon while he still has air, Borden gives Angier one word, "TESLA", and suggests that it is not merely the key to the transposition cipher of Borden's notebook (which Olivia had brought to Angier) but also the key to the illusion.

Angier travels to Colorado Springs to meet Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) and learn the secret of Borden's illusion. Tesla constructs a teleportation machine that resembles a Magnifying Transmitter, but the device initially fails to work. Angier learns from Borden's notebook that he has been sent on a wild goose chase. Feeling he has been cheated, he returns to Tesla's lab, but discovers that the machine creates and teleports a duplicate of any item placed in it. Tesla's rivalry with Thomas Edison forces Tesla to leave Colorado Springs soon after that, but he leaves Angier an improved version of the machine. In a letter, however, he warns Angier to destroy it.

Borden's relationship with Olivia takes its toll on Sarah, driving her to drink. Borden's apparent erratic behavior and Sarah's suspicion of an extramarital relationship between Borden and Olivia leads Sarah to hang herself. Angier returns to London to produce a final set of 100 performances of his new act, "The Real Transported Man". He insists that Cutter remain front stage for these shows and that only blind stagehands help backstage. In the new illusion, Angier disappears under huge arcs of electricity and instantaneously "teleports" 50 yards from the stage to the balcony. Borden is baffled but spots a trap door. After a show one night, Fallon follows Angier's stagehands. They move a large, concealed water tank across town to an abandoned building. Borden attends Angier's performance again. He slips backstage and discovers a locked water tank with a drowning Angier inside. Borden tries to save him, but Angier drowns. Cutter catches Borden, who is convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to hang. In prison, Borden reads Angier's diary from Colorado which addresses him directly with hopes he will rot in prison for his murder. Jess will become a ward of the state unless Borden gives up the secret of his illusion to a certain Lord Caldlow. He is forced to oblige, but refuses to reveal all unless he can see Jess before his execution. When Lord Caldlow visits with Jess, Borden realizes that he is Angier. Beaten, Borden gives him a note containing the secret of the original Transported Man trick, but Angier tears it up without reading it. Cutter also meets the lord and realizes he is Angier. Cutter then grasps the full grim cost of Angier's obsession when he sees he has adopted Jess. Cutter is furious that he was the one who indirectly framed Borden, who is subsequently hanged.

Cutter accompanies Angier to the abandoned building where the water tanks are stored, and helps him store the teleportation machine. Cutter leaves in disgust, silently acknowledging the arrival of Borden, who shoots Angier. Borden reveals that he and "Fallon" were identical twins who lived as a single individual, alternating lives as needed: one twin loving Sarah and the other loving Olivia. For the original illusion, a twin acted as the double. They were so committed to the illusion that they amputated the other twin's fingers to match his brother's injury; they also suffered the loss of Sarah as a result of their dedication to the illusion. Similarly, flashbacks recount Angier's method: that each time he disappeared during his illusion, the machine would create a duplicate, with one Angier falling through a trap door into a locked tank and drowning, and another Angier teleporting to the balcony. Each tank stores a drowned duplicate of Angier for each time that he has performed the trick. Before leaving, Borden looks back at the aisles of tanks containing the dead duplicates and then leaves the dead Angier as a fire begins to consume the building. Borden reunites with Jess.