Houdini

Houdini is a two-part, four-hour History channel event miniseries written by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Uli Edel.

The miniseries follows the man( Adrien Brody ) behind the magic as he finds fame, engages in espionage, battles spiritualists and encounters the greatest names of the era. The drama will chronicle the life of a man who can defy death through his stunts, his visions and his mastery of illusion. It was shot entirely in Budapest, Hungary (coincidentally the real Harry Houdini's birthplace). Brody, who had studied magic as a child, performed many of the show's stunts himself, including the suspended strait jacket escape and the famous Chinese Water Torture Cell.

It seems in the interest of inspiring awe, the creators of this series removed all of the actual awe around this legendary person and replaced it with annoying effects and hurried editing. The voice-over narration is uninspired, and makes the genius Houdini sound like a nitwit. The relationship between him and his family is reduced down to clichés and is indicative of lazy screen writing.

The worst part is that the actual history and character of Houdini is astounding and truly awe-inspiring. It doesn't need bells and whistles to be entertaining. All of this extra fluff was completely unnecessary and removes from the entertainment.

I have a strange relationship with Adrian Brody I like him and I like this movie and I think it's independent. The movie is good. I liked it when they debunked the magic tricks because it'll be even real life. The Costa was really good she had like this puppy eyes I laughed when they proved that all psychics are wrong and I love the hell do you need that although he was really eager to talk to his mother but because he was smart the checks didn't I want them and because he's actually Trackmaster you know it's all this all about not as great as Houdini's name but really good. I think they shorten the bed sets that entertaining.

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.

Viewed as a work of fiction this film is entertaining and worth watching. I say that as at the beginning of this picture it is made clear that the play contains fact and fiction, yet at the very end credits it is stated the movie is fiction.

Yet we all surely know that Houdini was historically a most famous "escape artist" and illusionist and forerunner to the likes of David Copperfield and David Blaine.

It would interesting to hear from a historian familiar with the real life Houdini to learn how accurate or otherwise this film is in its depiction of Houdini. From my knowledge much of the major incidents in the picture are factually based.

Where the movie scores heavily is, firstly, that it illustrates in detail the amazing escapes and illusions performed and for the most part shows how these tricks were done. Secondly, following the death of his mother, Houdini became a skeptic of spiritualists who were all the rage during this time period, and the movie handles Houdini's contempt for that very well.

The acting, direction, sets and music are all of a high quality and despite the film lasting over 2 parts @ 3-4 hours in total it had my attention throughout.

Well done History Channel!

7/10