benfizzsafc Killing Bono reviewAs always, I'll start this review with info on the film. Killing Bono was a movie released in 2011 and was based on Neil McCormick's 2003 memoir 'Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelgänger.' It was shot in Northern Ireland, funded by Northern Ireland Screen and was released by Paramount Pictures. Directed by Nick Hamm plus, the cast included some great young, upcoming talent in Ben Barnes and Robert Sheehan. In a nutshell, Killing Bono is a rock 'n' roll comedy about two Northern Irish brothers trying and struggling to forge their path through the 1980's music scene. At the same time, their old school friends successfully add their band name in the history of British rockers, their name being U2. Plunging the brothers' band deeper and deeper into the shadows, just like the thousands of other musicians that didn't make it. It has a great story: ambition, ego and the comedy of the 80's music scene all blended together. It's all told in an authentic, light-hearted way by director Hamm, who brings out the best in Barnes and Sheehan. The film overall is enjoyable and the main storyline- continuing dreams of stardom even when they remain out of reach-are hauntingly familiar for some. So it relates to many people well, but in my opinion it needs more funding to transform onto the big screen, although it does well considering the budget. If you're a British music fan or if you want an easy way to tell your kids it's not easy making it in the music industry I highly recommend this film, make sure your children have a working knowledge of U2 beforehand though. RATING: 7.3/10Best parts: The making of 'Bono' and 'The Edge' The "it's the Pope, or me" speech The ending-I won't spoil it

Spiked! spike-online.com A few years ago there was an achingly trendy 'electro rock' band called Bono Must Die. It was sued out of existence by Bono himself who clearly didn't like the idea of young, hip people swinging their pants to tunes built on Bono-hatred. Now there's a new film out called Killing Bono, yet far from troubling the normally so sensitive singer, it has received his backing. It isn't hard to see why. It's like a creation myth for U2, depicting Bono as a long-suffering saint and his band as a punkish, rebel outfit rather than the Po-faced promoters of 'world music' they really were.The film is based on rock critic Neil McCormick's book, I Was Bono's Doppelgänger. It tells the true-ish story of Dublin-born Neil and his brother Ivan trying to make it in pop and/or rock while continually being overshadowed by their former schoolfriends Paul Hewson and Dave Evans – otherwise known as Bono and The Edge, whose band The Hype later becomes U2 and conquers the world, while Neil and Ivan scrape by in a dingy flat in London where their numerous record company rejection letters are pinned to the wall in the shape of the word 'WANKERS'.The trouble is that in turning U2 into the barometer by which he measures and gets miserable about his own rubbishness, McCormick's book and now celluloid life story make Bono a saintly, inscrutably good, otherworldly figure. Bono (Martin McCann) floats through the movie in a Christ-like fashion, always impeccably turned out, voice calm, never saying words like 'bollox' or 'shite' as his schoolmates and the McCormicks do. He does, however, eat chips at one point, which is a kind of shocking image.It is entirely feasible, of course, that Bono really was like this: aloof, pure, pompous. That would not come as a surprise to anyone who has seen footage of Bono performing in the Eighties, with his big hair, high heels, and breathy, strangely American-accented mini-speeches about uprisings in Soweto (good) or uprisings in Northern Ireland (bad). Yet in investing Bono with an ethereal quality, in making him the yin to McCormick's yang, the movie comes across less like a rock biopic than as a conservative morality tale stuffed with righteous seers and wayward scallywags. Bono effectively saves the McCormick brothers, with a speech in the back of a limousine about brotherly love, in a not dissimilar fashion to the way Christ rescued James and John from a life of fishery.The mythologising extends to the way U2's music is presented. They're depicted as the heirs to punk, bashing out Iggy Pop songs in a garage before going on to conquer and colonise a bland pop landscape with heartfelt music. In truth, far from being the punks of the Eighties, U2 were the equivalent of those Seventies Po-faced prog rock bands that punk eventually swept aside. U2's own comeuppance came towards the end of the Eighties when, after a decade of thrilling ageing rock critics and Americans but boring the rest of us rigid with their sweeping and serious guitar songs, they were elbowed aside by the rebirth of pop hedonism: rave, acid, baggy, whose adherents didn't go to gigs to learn about Nelson Mandela but to get smashed.U2's out-of-touchness was brilliantly illustrated by their release in 1988 of the film and album Rattle and Hum, their most worthy dose of blackish, bluesy, Elvisy Americana to date, at a time when the kidz were knocking back Es and dancing like mental patients. 'Bombastic and misguided', said one critic of Rattle and Hum. 'Pretentious', said the rest. And of course U2 only made things worse when they tried to recover by releasing the electronic dance-inspired Achtung, Baby! in 1991. It was as if Jethro Tull had tried to play 'Pretty Vacant'. Just as the punks cheered upon hearing of the death of the fat, bloated Elvis in 1977, so some young 'electro rockers' today wish for the death of Bono.It really is only a handful of serious rock critics who still treat U2 seriously, fantasising that they are 'real' where most others are fake. As a result, Killing Bono, the life and times of a rock critic in the making, ends up being deeply conservative. Part On The Buses, part Rattle and Hum, it combines slapstick humour with Bono sanctification to tell a pretty warped story about both U2 and the Eighties.

twilliams76 It wanted to be funny but it wasn't -- just as its subjects wanted to be good at music and weren't.Killing Bono is the true-ish story of two Irish brothers who knew U2 front-man, Bono, in school and wanted to rival him in musical skill and talent. That they weren't really any good doesn't register with them as they believe Bono is simply stealing all of their hype and thunder ... so not only do the brother-duo fail on the musical front they fail on the cinematic one as well as they are annoying characters who just don't know when to shut-up or stop.Rivalries always have some potential for some decent stories; but luck just isn't on these Irish brothers' side(s) as they don't ever come across as ones we'd root or feel for. Bono IS better ... deal with it and find something else to do. They are the 80's Irish Winklevii (they were okay but others were much better ... and that's that!).I do think Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father, The Town, Inception) deserves a shout-out here! He is better than this movie and he is a TALENT that will be missed.

Margareta Blue Träumer I've just watched this movie and it really impressed me. It's not only a comedy story about creating a rock band...it's more than that. It's about complete dedication and endless hope to make something really big, it's about trying to conquer the world with no help, but your own powers, it's about giving everything! Among all those pretty funny scenes it was kind of a drama inside Neil. He really makes a lot of mistakes, but this happens only because he wants too much to succeed. He had a dream and he'd been completely overcome by it."Killing Bono" should be a life lesson for a lot of people. It certainly was for me.