Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

kitellis-98121 All in all there is little to fault in this stylish and well-made biopic.With heavily stylised visuals, anachronistic music, and very modern editing, this film presents its period storyline with a mind to 21st century audiences. But unlike most others that attempt this potentially hazardous balancing act, "Houdini" neatly pulls it off without injury.I watched it on Amazon as one long and very satisfying film, but apparently it was originally presented as a two-part miniseries, which I can't imagine helped the pacing or momentum. I'm glad Amazon joined the two halves together into a complete and uninterrupted telling of Houdini's life, with a beginning, middle, and end.Technically it is excellent. The performances are all top-rate. Adrian Brody shines in the title role, despite looking nothing like the real Harry Houdini.The story unfolds in a mostly linear way, but there are several flashback sequences which interrupt the narrative somewhat, despite giving important and relevant insights. I'd have, perhaps, preferred it to be more linear.Also, while I'm busy nit-picking, having already been aware of the circumstances of Houdini's death before watching, I was at first rather pleased with the early foreshadowing "moments" that this film inserted. But then it inserted them again and again. And then again. And then a few more times. Two or three evenly-spaced foreshadowing moments would have worked well. But by the time of his eventual death, I felt that I'd already seen it a dozen times. But this minor niggle did not mar an otherwise gripping and relentlessly enjoyable rideLiberties may have been taken with a few historical facts, but that is neatly covered by the opening caption, which playfully encourages the viewer to separate fact from fiction.Having thoroughly enjoyed the ride, I'll definitely be returning for more.

aesgaard41 I'm a big fan of Houdini; he ranks up there as one of the top historical figures to fascinate the present. The multiple layers of his life and the different translations of it from his public side to his private side have become fuel for some very interesting depictions from the 1953 depiction, "Houdini," to "The Great Houdini" with Paul Michael Glaser and Sally Struthers in 1976, the one that ranks as my favorite. However, after Jonathan Schaech's 2008 version, one might start to wonder what might be left to dramatize. Well, there is the rumor that Houdini might have been drafted to work as a spy for British Intelligence, a claim that has never been proved. With this depicted in the film, one might start to wonder what else did they get wrong? "Houdini" still manages to adhere to the basic time-line of Houdini's life and career, but it also seems to bend things here and there to create drama and to rush into the famous moments of his life we all want to see brought to life on the small screen. From his simple life working for carnivals to his later successes, the movie actually condenses the one thing that Houdini was actually best known for than his magic: his war on phony Spiritualists and then going much further than that by establishing his motives. Could Houdini have actually believed in an Afterlife so much that he outed all the charlatans he encountered trying to find a one-true psychic in touch with the spirit world. It's a very novel interpretation that I've never seen posed before, but it also makes sense when you keep it in mind to re-watch the other Houdini movies. However, where it starts becoming unbelievable are in depicting Houdini's possible spy career and more fiction with Houdini entertaining the Russian Royal Family and meeting Rasputin before the revolution, events I've learned which never happened. It does stay essentially truthful to his death in the hospital rather than the stage legend that has been forced down our throats. (Thank you, Tony Curtis.) Nevertheless, the movie does not fail to entertain or keep our attention. Despite being thinner and more gaunt than Houdini, Adrien Brody enjoys himself in the role and gives an excellent performance, as does Kristen Connolly who is woefully underused at times as a fiery and strong-willed Bess. The highlights are the explanations behind some of Houdini's lesser-known illusions. I enjoyed the movie, and unless you're a massive Houdini purist for accuracy, this one should appeal to you as well.

Jackson Booth-Millard Directed by Uli Edel (Body of Evidence, The Little Vampire), I spotted this two-part miniseries advertised and became most interested both because of the story of the famous man of the title and the leading actor playing him. Basically this television made film tells the life story of legendary and world famous Hungarian-American illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody), looking behind all the magic tricks and traps to getaway from that brought him fame and fortune. This includes his childhood living in poverty, his early beginnings doing magic tricks on the street and in the circus, meeting and marrying his beloved Bess Houdini (The Cabin in the Woods' Kristen Connolly), meeting and partnering with Jim Collins (Jarhead's Evan Jones) who became his stage assistant. The legendary escape challenges for Harry featured include from a jail cell, the Chinese water torture cell, the suspended straitjacket escape, chained up and jumping into icy water from a bridge and escaping from a locked bank vault style safe, it also shows Harry using his kills to engage in espionage missions for the government, working for head of MI5 William Melville (Tim Pigott-Smith). Through the years he encounters great names of the era, including Sherlock Holmes creator and spiritualist believer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The World Is Not Enough's David Calder), Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, mystical adviser Grigori Rasputin and Presidents of the United States. Following the death of his mother, Cecilia Weiss (Eszter Ónodi), he seeks to confront, battle with and expose fraudulent spiritualists, but ultimately he returns to his magic routes until mortal pains occur, most likely caused by many punches in the stomach that he took and blocked out the pain, in the end Harry Houdini died at age 52 of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix. Also starring Tom Benedict Knight as Dash Houdini, Shaun Williamson as Riley, Linda Marlowe as Lady Doyle and Louis Mertens as Erich Weiss. Brody is a very good choice as the leading man, Connolly is also well cast as his both loving and long concerned wife, the style of editing and use of special effects makes for great trick and escape sequences, you are gripped into finding out whether he will do it or not, and how, and the personal character story throughout is interesting to watch as well, all in all it was a well thought out and interesting drama. Very good!

paul2001sw-1 Harry Houndini was a great magician, showman, and at least according to his own legend, a fascinating character. But this doesn't mean that his life story is actually a single great narrative. This glossy renditioning of his biography leaves (too) little to the imagination; yet it's continuously straining, trying to find a uniting theme that means something more than the birth, extraordinary career, and death of one man. In places, the over-stretched story makes little sense: it's understandable that Houdini's assistant should have been grief-stricken by news of his death, but not that this should make him want to destroy all of his master's equipment. Aiden Brody has been good in other stuff, but in this role, there's a lot of screen time and not much to do with it. I could imagine Houdini playing a role in a clever-clever drama not unlike Nic Roeg's 'Insignificance'; but as a biographic hero, this is obvious and surprisingly dull stuff.