Trapping an escape artist

by RICHARD JONES

ILLUSIONIST and escape artist Harry Houdini played Australian audiences well with one of his most famous tricks performed underwater in Melbourne's Yarra River.

So in the early part of Gillian Armstrong's latest film Death Defying Acts Houdini has arrived in Sydney in 1926. Houdini (Guy Pearce) offers the princely reward of $10,000 to anyone who can connect him with his late mother and, more particularly, relay her last words to him.

By the time he arrives in Edinburgh on the next stage of his tour supposed psychic Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has heard of the offer and is determined to get her hands on the substantial cash prize.

McGarvie features in a contrived act with her daughter Benji (Saiorse Ronan, from Atonement). Benji works the audiences gleaning snippets of information for her mother, who then intones this personal stuff as if it's being passed on from the other side.

Inevitably romance between Houdini and McGarvie unfolds as the impoverished Scot holds a range of sances for the escapologist. The snag in all of this is Houdini's manager Sugarman (Timothy Spall) who's well aware of the shyster McGarvie's hold on his meal ticket.

He offers money to the con artist to clear off but the McGarvies refuse to leave and Houdini's tumble into the world of sances and spiritualism spirals out of control.

5 May 2008

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