You expect to have to work a bit with a Christopher Nolan film, but this long, slow tease of a movie, leaping back and forth in time as you expect from the Memento man, left me cold.

It's a kind of magic-world answer to Amadeus, with two duelling magicians played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman battling for top-dog status in 1890s London. But while Bale and Michael Caine pretty much reprise their roles in Nolan's previous film, Batman Begins, there's none of the warmth and humour this time out.

The director, who co-wrote this with his younger brother Jonathan, is as obsessed as his protagonists with the mechanics of pulling off illusions but has failed to make any of his characters in 1890s London interesting enough to make the viewer care who comes out on top. This is a serious omission in a 130-minute movie.

If you want a film about magic, Orson Welles' F for Fake, recently released on DVD is warmly recommended. That pulls off its own tricks with brevity and wit, something that this complicated, convoluted and overwrought piece of work signally fails to do.