I always thought of Pete Best as the fifth Beatle, but before Best, or at least at the same time, there was Stuart Sutcliffe. Torn between his desire to paint and his love of music, Sutcliffe also had an uncertain relationship with John Lennon, and an affair with the enigmatic Astrid Kirchherr during the band's Hamburg days that brought the frictions within the group to a head. The impressions of real people seem spot-on here, but there's a certain lack of chemistry between leads Sheryl Lee (as Kirchherr) and Stephen Dorff (as Sutcliffe) that prevents you becoming too involved with their problems. It's left to Ian Hart to steal the show as Lennon, a role he had already played two years earlier in a rather obscure offering called The Hours and the Times. The Beatles' music, as ever, is great, and director Softley moves the story along fast enough to keep all but the occasional patch of tedium at bay.


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