A solid 3 1/2 star affair from director Sam Taylor Wood (only her second feature length film) starring Aaron Johnson (who I didn't even know he was British) who played Kick-Ass in the great film of the same name. In this he stars as a Beatle himself John Lennon who we see in his younger years when he was brought up by his aunt Mimi (played excellently by Kristin Scott Thomas). Apparently overseen by Yoko herself we can assume that most of this story is true. I don't know about you but I never really knew about Lennon's upbringing and his relationship with his mother (played by Anne-Marie Duff). The film also captures the time where apparently before lung cancer since everybody and his dog was smoking cigarettes in this film! In this kind of a biopic you need a strong lead playing a real person and I believe Aaron Johnson shows he was up for the job. We saw him do a great job in Kick-Ass but here he was asked to show a lot more range in this film. The director said in the extras on the dvd that you can do a film like this in two ways; try to make the actors look as close to the real people they are portraying or not worrying so much about exact matches and just get good actors who don't necessarily look so much like their real life counterparts but get actors that will bring to the screen the subtle nuances and actions that the person they are portraying do and for that I would have to say they got it right in this one. A nice one all around for you to check out. Recommended.
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