Houdini

To be fair, the film presents Harry Houdini in an entertaining and dramatic way, but the issue is that it mixes fact with fiction to the point of completely distorting his real history.

First major point: Harry Houdini never visited Russia at any point in his life. This is well-documented in his biographies and all reliable historical sources. However, the movie randomly places him there as if he had toured the courts of the Tsars.

Second strange claim: the movie suggests that Rasputin punched Houdini in the stomach, causing his appendix to rupture. This is pure fiction. Rasputin never met Houdini and had nothing to do with his death. The real story is that Houdini was struck by a university student who wanted to test the legend of Houdini's ability to withstand abdominal blows - not by a mystical Russian figure.

It's clear that the film tried to create a showdown between "the Western magician" and "the Eastern mystic," but the result was a historical rewrite rather than a truthful portrayal.

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Final Verdict:

If you're looking for entertainment and fantasy, the movie is somewhat enjoyable.

But if you care about historical accuracy, this film is nothing more than an alternate reality with no connection to the truth.

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

This is definitely a modern miniseries.

Quick editing, fancy graphics and lots of slow motion effects. It even has some CSI-like visuals where you get to see how the muscles of the abdomen react to a direct punch and other similar graphics that usually appear in the CSI franchise.

The music is a mix of classic instruments, heavy metal guitars and synthesizers and adds to the modern feel of the show.

Harry Houdini is presented as a bigger than life character who quickly becomes rich and famous with his wit and boldness. Fame and fortune isn't enough though. He wants to be legendary. Also he wants to make his life count, so in this version he becomes an international spy who uses his performances in Germany and in Russia to gather intelligence before the first world war.

Adrien Brody is good enough as Harry Houdini and his narration, that you can hear throughout the episode, contributes to the dramatic tension that you may think that the show is lacking because of its very modern presentation.

Overall: A series worth watching for entertainment. From a biographical point of view you may want to look elsewhere.

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.