Camille B. At first when I noticed this title on the cable menu, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I just didn't understand what it was. Was it a movie, a biography, what? I sat down to watch it after I had recorded it, expecting little.This turned out to be the best documentary I've ever seen on a band. I've always loved U2 and their music, but this made me fall in love with them all over again. The live performances, beautifully filmed in black & white, were the BEST VERSIONS of some of the songs that I've ever heard. 'Bad,' 'Sunday Bloody Sunday,' and the gospel version of 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' were raw and powerful.But mostly what I enjoyed about this movie was that is was 99% music and little talk. The commentaries were short and the songs played all the way through. It was an intense two hours of nothing but great U2 music! I recommend this for any U2 fan, it will not disappoint!

davulture U2 Rattle and Hum focused on the Irish Band's 1987 Joshua Tree Tour in America. There is little plot in the movie, but pretty much "the band tries to figure out America." The movie starts with a nice (some may say egotistical rendition) of the Beatles "Helter Skelter" where Bono tells the crowd "Charles Manson stole this from the Beatles and were stealing it back." The film does have it's low moments such as a Church-inspired rendition of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" which sounds like a total mess and features very minimal vocal interpretation from Bono. We are paying to see U2 sing lead!! Not the Church. Despite this the inspired rendition of "Angel of Harlem" is very exciting, as is "Exit", "Bullet in the Blue Sky" (One of the tracks features in Color), "Pride In the Name of Love", "Desire", "Bad", "Sunday Bloody Sunday" a haunting "With or Without You", "Where The Streets Have No Name", "Silver and Gold" and a nice collaboration with BB King called "When love comes to town" where even BB King even admits that he is amazed at Bono's ability to write songs. As a concert the movie is great but as a movie, it literally follows no sequence but showing the band perform songs with very little transition and sort of makes them look more idiotic as they "Try and Look For America" rather then the rebellious figures of change in the mid 1980's. Still though the songs are probably better then most of the U2 albums and Bono's voice is at a level I don't think it's ever been since which is great for a U2 purist. In a way I feel bad for the band because this was a big budget picture (really a concert) and after this U2 soon lost their puritanical edge of the 1980's as they shifted into a more of darker and deeper sound featured in their next album Achtung Baby. Which is a benefit of this movie being made, but overall it's a great concert flick but not so great as an actual feature length motion picture.

roy-nicholas33 I am a massive U2 fan and i have been since i first saw this fantastic rockumentry in 1988. I am now the proud owner of every CD U2 have released and i have almost all DVD releases from this fantastic Irish band.My favorite song from Rattle and hum is With or without you, The haunting voice of Bono and the passion of the guitar echoing from the Edge leaves me with "goose bumps" right up my arms.U2 have gone through a lot of transitions over the last 16 years, But this movie has recorded the band through the best years of their inspirational music. Long live U2 and all that they stand for...10/10Shame their concert tickets are not so easy to get hold of! Only seen them live twice as i can never get a ticket in time!

tedg Spoilers herein.It is almost impossible to make a successful movie of a concert these days, because the choices are so few and most have all been done superbly the first time around.This one is hampered by a decidedly unimaginative filmmaker who apparently used pickup talent as he went from town to town.Too bad too, because there is a story here that would have provided good, healthy filmmaking grain. Before the period of this film, these guys had one good idea and were able to leverage it to success in standard pop fashion. That idea was to shift the continuity of the line in their music from the usual to a slightly unusual.The usual had been a matter of riffs or drum/bass line or both. What they did was substitute closed short phases there and move the continuity to either the lead guitar or the vocal, depending on who wrote what. You can even see it in their costumes: the two rhythm guys look like stevedores and just plink out standard phrases. The other two affect "musician hair" and madeup one word names.So far, not very interesting except in the history of pop. But by the time of this film, they were tired of this simpleminded shift and began experimenting with all sorts of different permutations on the same theme. This film is the record of their experiments.They announce at the beginning what they are up to. When the Beatles created "Helter Skelter" is was devised as a way to exploit the fact that each of them could pass off any thread to any other Beatle and have it seamlessly continue. The title is literally from a board game (in the US called "Chutes and Ladders") where rises and falls are passed from one player to the next. It -- as performed by The Beatles -- is a masterpiece of woven handoffs. There are five threads being passed around.Now listen to the version that starts this film. Everything about it is choppy. They deliberately throw away every element of continuity. Every phrase by every player comes to a dead stop before the next one begins.Now step through each chapter in the story and you encounter different, sometimes very novel and appealing ways of tying the local continuity together, They do it the old way. They do it with blues echos. They do it with overwhelming choir. They do it with a haunting, balledic chant. They try everything they can think of and all the existing tricks. Clearly, the music is much more articulate than they are about their music.Folks, this sort of thing is the bread and butter of filmmaking. In fact, architecting a film is a matter of selecting just this placement of narrative continuity and what relationship that narrative has to who owns the tone.But this filmmaker was either blind to the possibilities presented, or incapable of using them. A shame. A real shame. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.