This movie from Gillian Armstrong begins with an ingenious and entertaining idea. Harry Houdini, the great escape artist, was famously devoted to his mother and distraught at her death; he was also noted for his debunking of so-called spiritualists and table-rappers. What if a spiritualist claimed to be in touch with Houdini's mother? Would Houdini's Oedipal anguish somehow be transformed into the credulity that he had spent his life denouncing? Guy Pearce plays Houdini; Catherine Zeta-Jones is the cunning, predatory minx with a music-hall mind-reading turn who thinks that Houdini, however grand, will be susceptible to her wiles. But, however intriguing, the movie is over-schematic, slow-moving and over-furnished. It never seems to come alive with any believable interplay of characters; the movie locks itself into a watertight tank of a premise, and the handcuffs won't come off.