Death Defying Acts

Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Saoirse Ronan

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472071/

This review contains minor spoilers.

How is it that this movie completely passed me by when it was first released? I want to think that I may have seen a trailer for it but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. This tends to happen sometimes; even with the amount of movies that I watch, one or two seem to try and slip by under the radar. I’m glad I got a chance to see this film. Houdini is an extremely interesting guy and with “The Prestige” still somewhat fresh in my mind I was hoping for a great time.

I did really enjoy this film but there were still things about it that I didn’t like. The plot is based on the idea that Houdini will pay $10,000 to anyone who can tell him his mothers dieing words, which gives him an endless line of ambitious psychics. Now for the majority of the film I’m pretty confident in my assessment that in the movie’s world there is nothing supernatural. The film evens supports that for the most part. But then near the end they have scenes that make me question my assumptions, and then the next scene they’re back to normal, only to flip back to the supernatural again. Even now, after having finished it I couldn’t say for sure which is true; whether there are psychics or whether the supernatural isn’t real.

The back and forth nature of this film was not nearly bad enough to sully my view of the film however. Neither was the slow pacing of the end of the film which came at quit a surprise since up until the last ten or so minutes the movie moved along at such a great pace that when I looked at my watch and saw that it was almost over I couldn’t believe it. This rarely if ever happens when I am watching a movie, and I attribute some of that to the fact that the acting was so good.

I am yet to see Atonement (I know, it’s on my list) so I was very surprised by the talent of Saoirse Ronan. She was amazing in this, definetly overshadowing the rest of the talented crew. I also enjoyed seeing Timothy Spall return to a more serious role after dabbling in Harry Potter and Enchanted (and yes, Sweeney Todd where I still think his role was not very serious).

I was surprised by this movie; I knew almost nothing about it and didn’t go in with the highest hopes (sure I wanted it to be great but that almost never actually happens). It was no oscar winner and it perhaps not as good as The Prestige but I did enjoy it, and I would recommend checking it out.

~ by Hobbes on April 14, 2008.