ada the leading man is my tpye

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Jackson Booth-Millard Directed by Uli Edel (Body of Evidence, The Little Vampire), I spotted this two-part miniseries advertised and became most interested both because of the story of the famous man of the title and the leading actor playing him. Basically this television made film tells the life story of legendary and world famous Hungarian-American illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody), looking behind all the magic tricks and traps to getaway from that brought him fame and fortune. This includes his childhood living in poverty, his early beginnings doing magic tricks on the street and in the circus, meeting and marrying his beloved Bess Houdini (The Cabin in the Woods' Kristen Connolly), meeting and partnering with Jim Collins (Jarhead's Evan Jones) who became his stage assistant. The legendary escape challenges for Harry featured include from a jail cell, the Chinese water torture cell, the suspended straitjacket escape, chained up and jumping into icy water from a bridge and escaping from a locked bank vault style safe, it also shows Harry using his kills to engage in espionage missions for the government, working for head of MI5 William Melville (Tim Pigott-Smith). Through the years he encounters great names of the era, including Sherlock Holmes creator and spiritualist believer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The World Is Not Enough's David Calder), Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, mystical adviser Grigori Rasputin and Presidents of the United States. Following the death of his mother, Cecilia Weiss (Eszter Ónodi), he seeks to confront, battle with and expose fraudulent spiritualists, but ultimately he returns to his magic routes until mortal pains occur, most likely caused by many punches in the stomach that he took and blocked out the pain, in the end Harry Houdini died at age 52 of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix. Also starring Tom Benedict Knight as Dash Houdini, Shaun Williamson as Riley, Linda Marlowe as Lady Doyle and Louis Mertens as Erich Weiss. Brody is a very good choice as the leading man, Connolly is also well cast as his both loving and long concerned wife, the style of editing and use of special effects makes for great trick and escape sequences, you are gripped into finding out whether he will do it or not, and how, and the personal character story throughout is interesting to watch as well, all in all it was a well thought out and interesting drama. Very good!

Sebastian Heron Now I want to say before I start that this show is actually a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Not all of it is real, most of it is speculation and some of it is completely made up, however all of it is picked, to give the watcher the best experience possible. That being said, this show was nothing special.People see the topic of Houdini bashed about now and again, however what we know of Houdini's "real" life is so little it becomes a topic which struggles to live and dies sour.This is why most of us were so shocked when we heard there was going to be a Houdini biopic, I mean it had to be done, one of the greatest figures of the late 19th/early 20th century was going to get his screen time.But from the first day it started to go down hill. The initial cover art and the poorly chosen cast were the first of many mistakes which lead to this mediocre expo. The second mistakes made, were the poorly written (and acted) dialogue and lack of attention to details which really shone through in the finished piece. Finally it has to be the airing of the show on the "History Channel". Now I'm not sure if this was planned from the start or a change made in production or maybe the original channel who produced it didn't want it, but I couldn't have picked a worst channel to air this on, surely history is something true and honestly, to be fair, barely any of this is actually true. However "luckily" for me and my 64 million neighbours the show was aired on channel 4, a TV- channel known for airing interesting and provocative dramas.All in all the finished product was rather average and most definitely disappointing, the latter episode being the worst of the two. My rating 5/10.

dovesrun This movie may not have been exactly historically correct, but I really don't care. I enjoyed finding out how Houdini did his illusions. That was very interesting. Also, while I know the real Houdini was not nearly as good looking as Adrien Brody, I thought Brody did an excellent job. The fact that he is very handsome and somewhat sexy didn't hurt. The show was extremely entertaining and I look forward to a DVD. I would watch it again. It was not touted to be an accurate documentary. The History channel had another show that did that. This was a "movie" portraying Houdini's life. I enjoyed every minute of it. I was not interested in learning all about the real Houdini, I could get books if I wanted to do that. The movie did a good enough job.

nicholls_les Anyone who has read anything about Houdini, seen his picture or the rare film footage we have would have to wonder why Adrien Brody thought he could carry this off. He looks at best ridiculous as Houdini. Physically Houdini was a mini muscleman but Brody is painfully skinny. He doesn't have the charisma either. Houdini could capture his audience and his eyes according to those who met him were intense.Adrien Brody was reasonably good in the Pianist (not deserving of an Oscar in my opinion) but I have not seen him carry of anything well since. In Cadillac, the film about Chess records he was just awful, but in this he is even worse.Sadly other cast members seem quite well cast, especially Kristen Connolly as Houdini's wife Bess.Who knows one day we might actually get a good film about the great Houdini?