Metallica Through The Never (October 2013)

Official Australian release date: 10/10/13. Viewed: 10/10/13.

Director: Nimród Antal
Actors: Dane DeHaan, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Rob Trujillo
Genre: Music / Action
Rating: M.

Pretty simple – if you like Metallica, you’ll enjoy this film, and if you don’t like their music – don’t watch it! It’s essentially a concert film, although shorter than usual, since they only play 14 songs over 90min, rather than the usual 18-20 songs over 140min. The only difference being that this concert is interspersed with 2-5min clips of the roadie (DeHaan) fetching a bag…

I admire what Metallica have tried to do here – spicing up a standard concert film by adding some narrative – but it doesn't really work as you don’t really care what’s going on outside the venue, especially since it makes no sense! It’s basically just the roadie running around, being chased in a fantasy land… And pretty frustrating with the intentional tease of what’s in the bag?

The actual concert itself is great – when you open with two of your best songs (‘Creeping Death’ and ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’), it’s pretty amazing that you can still have songs just as good at the end! I wish they had the full ‘Ecstasy of Gold’ intro – it’s pretty special live. I found it funny that ‘Through The Never’ (off the Black album) never got a run, and ‘One’, ‘Cyanide’ and ‘Wherever I May Roam’ are all cut short. But the amount of effort put into the stage show and design – on top of the coffins used for all of the Death Magnetic tour – is astounding. The stage is made of LED’s, plenty of lasers and pyrotechnics, there’s the statue from And Justice For All, headstones from Master of Puppets and a giant electric chair from Ride The Lightning. The only thing I didn't like of the concert part was the end to ‘Enter Sandman’, which was ripped (unnecessarily) off their concert DVD, ‘Cunning Stunts’. Also, the band playing all of ‘Orion’ during the credits is pretty great. Not bad for a bunch of 50-year-olds!

Overall: 2 stars for the “film” component, 4 stars for the concert. There's nothing like seeing Metallica live, as the 15,000 people in the crowd can attest to!

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.