BACKBEAT (1994) - ♦♦

Directed by - Iain Softley

Written by - Iain Softley, Michael Thomas, Stephen Ward

Starring - Sheryl Lee, Stephen Dorff

"It's not unusual for cinema to have used musical icons and even more particularly The Beatles for subpar generic storylines. It's a shame, however, that the story of Backbeat should be set during a particularly exciting time in the history of the band, immediately before they made it big during their days in Hamburg. 

More importantly, the story of Backbeat revolves around the unusual love triangle between John Lennon, Stu Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr. Stu, then bassist of The Beatles, was also on his way to becoming a celebrated artist but had agreed to be in John's band out of his friendship and admiration for him. In Hamburg, they fall in with a group of artists and one of them is Astrid, by whom Stu is instantly taken, and who awakens feeling of ambitions in him that would lead him to part ways with his Liverpool buddy. 

Despite the story being interesting to all music fans and all Beatles fans, the film is rather generic and not very much interesting. The screenplay spend a lot of the time running around in circles and dragging out certain psychological tensions between the characters that never truly materialise on screen in any type of fulfilling ways. 

The redeeming factor predictably comes from the music itself, and from an air of excitement that even an essentially dull and underwhelming movie as Backbeat can't deny it. However, for the most part it's simply easily forgettable and one of many such films inspired by the story of The Beatles."

Biopic, UK/Germany