Death Defying Acts

2007. Dir: Gilian Armstrong. Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Saoirse Ronan and Jack Bailey. ●●○○○

On Saturday I was down in London and finally got a chance to see Death Defying Acts. I'm not sure I should have bothered.

It's a fictionalised account of the circumstances around Harry Houdini's (Pearce) debunking of paranormal claims by challenging pshychics, including Zeta-Jones's Mary McGarvie, to communicate to his deceased mother and repeat her last words.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of the story. There are some elements which could be close to the truth; Houdini's obsessions with his mother and with death generally. Whereas others must be purely fanciful such as the obligatory romance between the two leads.


This mixing of fact and fiction is symptomatic of where the film fails. Armstrong couldn't seem to decide whether this was a bona fide biopic of Houdini or an expose of the lengths that fake mediums will go to, and ultimately the film manages to fall between the 2 stools.

If I were to choose which way I would have liked to have seen to film go I think I would have preferred a story about McGarvie and her daughter, played by the superb Saoirse Ronan. Their story arcs include the comedic preparation for their Music Hall show, their desperate search for clues to Mrs. Houdini's last words as a way out of poverty (although actually their home didn't appear to quite as poverty stricken as the script suggeted) and the hinted at possibility that Ronan did actually have a gift.

If we had dropped Houdini, and his mess of pyschological tics Pearce was overplaying, then perhaps we might have had a chance to delve further into the is she or isn't she able to tell the future question that was shoehorned in the films closing scenes.

The several dream sequences with floaty angels and acute camera angles were also needlessly distracting.

Perhaps with more focus on the interesting elements of the story and a greater attention to detail by the technical team would have made the 2 hours more enjoyable.