Killing Bono

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 31 Mar 2011
Film title: Killing Bono
Director: Nick Hamm
Starring: Ben Barnes, Robert Sheehan Krysten Ritter, Pete Postlethwaite
Release date: 1 Apr
Certificate: 15

For many there’ll be no more tantalising film title this year than this one based on Neil McCormick’s autobiographical tale of his rivalry with high-school chum Paul Hewson. By the late 80s, one had become an arrogant front-man with bad hair and the other had turned out exactly the same, but with international success and an endorsement from the Pope.

Ben Barnes is pleasantly goofy as the hubristic McCormick, a man incapable of making a wise career decision for himself or his gormless brother and band-mate Ivan (Misfits motor-mouth Robert Sheehan), and Pete Postlethwaite, in his swan song, is gloriously camp as the boys’ predatory homosexual landlord. Hamm’s knockabout direction rattles and hums, but there’s little mileage in jokes about 80s fashion and well-read gangsters. More disappointing than the lame script, however, is that bogus title. Rather than cudgel Bono it cuddles, portraying the diminutive singer as a humble altruist with piercing eyes and the patience of a saint – even his mullet looks good. This isn’t homicide, it’s hagiography. [Jamie Dunn]

 

http://www.killingbono.co.uk/