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Starring Guy Pearce, Catherine Zeta Jones
Directed by Gillian Armstrong
Harry Houdini adjacent an under-construction Sydney Harbour Bridge sets an eloquent opening tone. Armstrong’s vivid romance is many things.
Foremost it is elegant: Jones and Pearce hug the camera, opulent locations do the rest. Death Defying Acts is, above all, a love story between two people whose line of work brings them closer than they thought possible. She is Mary McGarvie who, with her scrappy daughter (Atonement’s Saoirse Ronan), offers a different type of escape.
They’re con artists who ‘commune with the dead’ for pennies a performance. Learning that Houdini has a secret for which he’ll pay handsomely, they set out to divulge his heart’s desire.
Armstrong ticks all the boxes as she layers her story with a confident sense of period need. Mary’s poor background, her unconventional ways and her daughter’s quirky beliefs butt neatly into Houndini’s privileged, empty world.
Timothy Spall as his anxious manager lends ample weight, though Pearce, and to a lesser extent Jones, fails to bring much that is new drama.
They leave that to rising talent Saoirse who injects a sense of intrigue and urgency that fits with the wondrous detail.
Death Defying Acts is seldom boring, but elegance alone leaves little impression. Ironically for a film about magic, there’s little to be found.
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