There are some shall I call them “suspense thrillers” that are good for only one viewing. Once you know the ending and how the plot twists are resolved, the film is spoiled for subsequent viewing. There are other suspense thrillers that are great no matter how many times you view them as you are continually pulled into the narrative by superior film making, whether you know the ending or not. One of the latter types of suspense thrillers is the subject of this review, The Illusionist.

Film 

To be as brief as possible, The Illusionist is suspense filmmaking at its finest. Although a bit slower paced that most newer films of this genre, the film pulls you right into the story. In this regard, it is a bit Hitchcockian if you will. It is very subtle in the way it snares you You know that something it afoot. You may even know what. What you don’t know is the how. In this regard, the director of the film, Neil Burger, is a bit like the illusionist in the film, Eisenheim, in that he is able to suspend your belief and pull you into the story, even though you may know better.

Ed Norton, Jr. is cast as Eisenheim and gives a wonderful performance as the illusionist, who while performing in Vienna in the 19th Century before Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell) who is the future head of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, meets up with his long lost childhood sweetheart, Sophia (Jessica Biel) at one of his performances. Sophia just happens to be the fiancee of the Prince who offers her up as a volunteer for one of Eisenheim’s illusions. Eisenheim and Sophia rekindle their long lost romance and Sophia confesses that she wants to escape the clutches of Leopold who is abusive and who wants to depose his father the Emperor and rule the Empire with her at his side.

Eisenheim then concocts an ingenious plan at great personal risk to do just that, keeping one step ahead of the Vienna Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) who is a friend and confidant of Leopold. The film has several wonderful performances. In fact, the entire cast turns in top notch performances. The film features a great script and wonderful direction and was a thrill to experience in high definition. The Illusionist is very highly recommended.

Video 

All things considered, I was quite pleased with the video presentation of The Illusionist on Blu-ray. The film is mostly shot at night or dimly lit interiors, illuminated only by candle light. Not surprisingly, the image during most of the film is fairly soft. However, despite this softness, detail is fairly good, although falling a good deal short of the best looking films on Blu-ray. This is not the result of the encoding process but is just how the film was shot.

Comparing the Blu-ray version of the film with the DVD that is also included with this release, is no contest, with the DVD looking like a muddled mess in comparison. The level of clarity and detail on the Blu-ray encode is miles ahead of that on the DVD. The films’ color palette is rather subdued with the exception of the very end of the film. The rest of the film has a bit of a sepia tone, with skin tones and the image in general having a brown tinge. Fine film grain is also well preserved. I did not detect any obvious examples of digital noise reduction or edge enhancement. This is a fine encode of some difficult material and should please fans of the film.

Audio 

The audio design is rather simplistic being front heavy with sparse use of the surrounds. The surrounds are used to mostly to provide some subtle interior ambiance with the occasional sound effects such as galloping horses. While I was far from impressed with the audio design, I was more than impressed with the audio fidelity here, which is rich, smooth and full and really easy on the ears. The musical score is also presented with excellent fidelity with silky smooth strings, rich and full bass and excellent imaging and transparency. I also found the fidelity of the dialogue track to be just as impressive and proving the sense of real voices in real space which I find to be very appealing. While I would have preferred that the film had a more immersive sound design, the overall fidelity of the sound is so good that I found it easy to overlook the less than sophisticated sound design.

Special Features 

If you are looking for much in the way of extras, this is not the release for you. The Blu-ray disc that is part of this two disc combo pack contains no extras at all. The extras, such as they are, are located on the DVD edition of the film and were also included with the prior DVD release of the film. They consist of a feature audio commentary with writer/director Neil Burger and two featurettes.

The first of the two is “The Making of The Illusionist” consisting of interviews with the four lead actors in the film. The “Jessica Biel on The Illusionist” consists of a very brief interview with Jessica Biel, 99% of which is included in the prior featurette. Both of the featurettes are very short, lasting only a few minutes. I am not really sure why they bothered with the second one.

The extras also include some trailers for other films and are hardly worth a mention. As I noted above, the Blu-ray release of The Illusionist is a two disc combo pack containing a DVD edition of the film which is really the only extra worth considering.

Final Thoughts  

The Illusionist is great film that is well worth your consideration and is very highly recommended. Do yourself a favor and add this release to your collection. You will be glad you did.