Gillian Armstrong's tony "what if" tale, from a screenplay by Tony Grisoni and Brian Ward, sets up camp alongside A STUDY IN TERROR (1965), TIME AFTER TIME (1979), RAGTIME (1981) et al at the intersection of oddball historical fact and esoteric speculative fiction.
Edinburgh, 1926: Mother-daughter con artists Mary and Benji McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Soairse Ronan) eke out a hardscrabble existence by means of a vaudeville spiritualist act whose local popularity rests primarily on the revealing costume Mary dons to play exotic "Princess Kali." Mary has trained her pre-teen daughter well -- Benji revels in the thrill of the con with the instinctive callousness of the very young -- but she's still a kid who thrills to the adventures of American showman Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce), whose exploits she follows through comic strips and newsreels. In the end, though, when Mary spots the opportunity of a lifetime in the announcement that Houdini is bringing his act to Edinburgh, Benji falls right in line. Since the death of his beloved mother, the professional trickster has developed an interest in spiritualism and longs for evidence of life after death; he' s willing to hand over the staggering sum of $10,000 to anyone who can contact his mother. All the proof he requires is an accurate rendering of the dying words he alone heard. But much though Houdini wants to believe, he's no easy mark; intimately familiar with the tricks of the trade, he's already discredited scores of fake crystal gazers, mediums, table rappers and occultists. Mary thinks she's cunning enough to fleece him, given some time and a little luck; what she doesn't count on is the unnerving bond that springs up between them, and her daughter's complex reaction to seeing the man she idolizes fall for the woman who taught her that the road to hell is paved with grifters who went soft and gave a sucker an even break.
Though consistently handsome, Armstrong's chronicle of a death foretold feels strangely detached and stagy for a good two-thirds of its running time. By the time it kicks into gear many viewers will have bailed and that's a shame, because the conclusion has a surprising emotional depth rooted in the wary, self-protective performances of Pearce, Zeta-Jones and 13-year-old Ronan -- who is, if anything, more eerily watchful than she was 2007's ATONEMENT, which earned her an Oscar nomination. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh