Tasteful direction seems to kill any chance of getting a glimpse of what the characters in this film might have really been like. It's like a very detached museum piece created by a well meaning suburban curator, who wants everything to be viewed in the nicest possible light. Houdini was a very tough ex-circus performer..a guy who started in the scummiest dumps and worked his way up..and the Edinburgh music hall scene was an absurdity. I went to music halls in Edinburgh in the 1950s, and you could smell the beer and body odour, hear the place ringing out with cat calls, swearing, smart-aleck remarks..not in this dainty presentation..and this was supposed to be the much cruder 1920s. That daintiness seems to extend to the female con artists, who must be the best dressed, best fed couple of slappers in history..and how has Ms Zeta Jones become so boring? She used to be so full of zest and sass. There's very little zest and sass in this script or in this film.