The Prestige

Christopher Priest wrote this great book called The Prestige, about a pair of magicians in 19th century London who are competing against each other. What originally starts out as a friendly rivalry soons turns deadly.

Christopher Nolan turned the book into an equally great movie of the same name that was released in-between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Christian Bale, who played Batman in Nolan's trilogy, also stars in this film as one of the feuding magicians, with Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) as his rival.

Piper Perabo co-stars in this mystery/thriller as Julia, a magician's assistant who gets bound while barefoot for her act, where she escapes from a water tank.

She requests "volunteers" from the audience to tie her up. But they always wind up being Bale and Jackman, who start out playing magician's assistants who pose as audience members.

We see Piper perform this act twice in the film--the first time, everything's goes great. But the second time it gets tragic, and it's one of the reasons that created the feud between Bale and Jackman's characters. Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) and Rebecca Hall (Iron Man 3) also star here. The late great David Bowie plays Tesla. The Prestige still holds up very well as a great movie years after its release. The book is also highly recommended, too.