Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

The Great Magician Blu-ray Movie Review

A prestige production?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 17, 2013

2006 saw the nearly simultaneous release of two high profile films which had magic and magicians featured prominently in their storylines. The Illusionist was a fairly straightforward love story tucked within a rather contrived plot that included a magician attempting to secure a life with a woman well above his lower social standing. The film included one supposed “twist” that any good trick spotter should have seen coming from at least a mile off. (I should state that I was significantly less impressed with The Illusionist than quite a few people, as the film received rather good reviews and did considerable business at the box office.) A couple of months after The Illusionist debuted, Christopher Nolan’s densely plotted The Prestige appeared, a film that included so many twists and turns that it warrants (at the very least) a second viewing to unwrap its many artifices and filmic sleights of hand. Personally, I consider The Prestige to be one of Nolan’s undisputed masterpieces, a film that manages to combine a number of incredibly unexpected elements, everything from a love triangle to hidden identities to (for crying out loud) Nicholas Tesla in one stunningly original formulation. Interestingly, The Prestige was not universally admired by either critics or audiences upon its theatrical release, though it, like The Illusionist, did okay raking in the ticket sales. This may or may not be evidence that some critics and audiences simply prefer more easily accessible material, films without a surfeit of information and with flashy but easily understood tricks. It’s hard to imagine what some audiences are going to make out of The Great Magician, a high profile Chinese production that saw Tony Leung’s return to the screen after a rather lengthy absence, but which combines both a Prestige-esque labyrinth of plot elements with a surface deep, almost silly, ambience that is (to my mind, anyway) more in the shallower league of The Illusionist.

There are so many simultaneous plot elements introduced seemingly willy-nilly in the opening several minutes of The Great Magician that it’s almost hard to know where to start, and many audience members will no doubt feel like their heads are reeling from what seems to be unconnected information. We initially are drawn into an early twentieth century China where feuding warlords control different regions. The country is caught in a sort of netherworld after the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the initial chaos of the early republic. We first see a lackey named Liu Kunshan (Wu Gang) use magic to attempt to scare a bunch of convicts into volunteering for the army. Liu’s warlord boss, the aptly named Bully (Sean Lau Ching-Wan), is meantime a blustering fool who has imprisoned a young woman named Liu Yin (Zhou Xun) with the hopes that she will relent and become his seventh wife. Bully’s “seduction” of the woman becomes a drawn out martial arts battle with Bully the decided underdog who gets more than a bit bullied himself by the extremely capable (and flexible) Liu Yin. Liu Yin tells Bully he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with her until he finds her missing father.

Meanwhile, another (much more formidable) magician named Zhang Xian (Tony Leung) shows up and wows a large audience by “defeating” another magician by replicating and improving on that magician’s trick. We soon discover that Chang has much more important things on his mind, and is in fact developing a caper to deal with Lei so that he can free Liu Yin, with whom he has a long romantic history. Also playing out in some frankly confusing cutaways is the story of Liu Yin’s missing father, Liu Wanyau (Paul Chun), yet another magician, one who is a master of mind control but who may know the key to finding a powerful secret known as the Seven Wonders.

This précis just barely scratches the surface of a film that also includes a glut of supporting characters, including Japanese spies masquerading as filmmakers, a sweet brother and sister duo attempting to hold on to their family business, and a madman out to procure an alchemical formula (keep your eyes peeled for none other than Tsui Hark in a cameo). Despite the failures I personally experienced with regard to The Illusionist and the confusion that some seemed to experience with regard to The Prestige (a confusion which I suggest would completely disappear if they’d simply revisit the film and pay very close attention, especially to Michael Caine’s opening speech, which basically gives away the entire plot structure in one neat little gambit), the fact is both of those films were in their own way rather streamlined affairs that had a point of view and delivered that perspective without a bunch of tangential information getting in the way. Almost the exact opposite is true with regard to The Great Magician. This is a film so absolutely stuffed to the gills with so many competing plotlines, ideas and even tonal approaches that it truly boggles the mind a lot of the time, and not in a good way.

Obviously co-writer and director Derek Yee wants to draw cogent parallels between magic making and filmmaking, but it’s both a too convenient conceit as well as one which Yee doesn’t even fully exploit in any case, since there’s so much other peripheral information flying by at the speed of light that any commentary gets lost in the shuffle. What should have been a bright and breezy caper film instead gets weighed down in too many sidebars until it becomes next to impossible to know exactly which element is supposedly the most important. The film is undeniably handsome, in fact rather opulently so in terms of the costumes and sets, and there is some decent fight choreography, but this is one magic trick where the wires are most definitely showing.

The Great Magician Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Great Magician is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is often a sumptuously beautiful film, and the high definition presentation is sharp and fluid, with excellent fine object detail that really brings out some incredible elements in both the costumes and sets. Colors are lush, deeply saturated and extremely varied, black levels are solid and contrast remains strong throughout the film. The color grading here is really on the subtle side, with occasional tints of amber in some of the more glamorous locales and a slight blue edge when the film gets out into the grittier streets. The special effects (some practical, some CGI) are well blended and look quite good, helping to make the magic seem more realistic.

The Great Magician Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Great Magician features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 mixes in both Mandarin and English. The original Mandarin 5.1 track is quite immersive, with a number of well done foley effects that explode around the surrounds. A lot of the scenes are quite crowded, and the 5.1 track does an excellent job of creating a sense of space and community, with widely splayed effects and dialogue. One niggling complaint might be the kind of cheesy score, which often sounds like 8 bit video game music (could that possibly have been intentional?). Fidelity is excellent and there's some very appealing dynamic range.

The Great Magician Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making the Magic (1080i; 37:55) is a fun behind the scenes featurette that also has a lot of brief interview snippets with most of the principal cast and crew.


• Making the Magic (1080p; 00:52)

The Great Magician Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The most surprising thing about The Great Magician is that it ends up not being very much fun. This is a film that is chock full of whimsy and opulence, but which just kind of sits there, waiting for the next tangential subplot to unfold, which in turn will quickly be replaced with yet another tangent. There's no denying how sumptuously beautiful the film is, and so for those who like to luxuriate in eye candy with very little to engage their mind or heart, The Great Magician may well be an agreeable enough time killer. Personally, I'd recommend revisiting The Prestige for the second or second hundredth time.