REVIEW #349 Back to Black (2024)

Back to Black explores the life of Amy Winehouse, the making of her music that took the world by storm and her tumultuous relationship with Blake Fiedler Civil.

Back to Black unfortunately feels like a biopic that will be forgotten about pretty quickly, although the story of Amy Winehouse certainly shouldn’t be! It’s a heartbreaking story highlighting the effects of alcohol, drugs and toxic relationships and also the dark side to fame. However the execution is a little lacklustre, despite there being a few scenes I actually really enjoyed. The problem biopics face is that its incredibly hard to get the pacing right, with so much to cover in a short period of time and the rest of the movie has to be pretty damn good in order to make up for it. Well, here, the performances were good, with Marisa Abela capturing the spirit of Amy nicely and Jack O’Connell doing brilliantly to illustrate the sort of charm that won the real Amy over in the first place. But I felt the cutting and editing overall could have been better, it certainly didn’t look like a film with a $70m budget, I couldn’t quite believe it cost that much to produce! But one to watch because Amy’s talent and story deserved to be showcased.

Overall (6.2/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan