The life story of Elvis Presley as seen through the complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
- Released: 2022-06-22
- Runtime: 159 minutes
- Genre: Drama, History, Music
- Stars: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Dacre Montgomery, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Richard Roxburgh, Helen Thomson, Yola, David Wenham, Luke Bracey, Alex Radu, Alton Mason, Xavier Samuel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Natasha Bassett, Leon Ford, Kate Mulvany, Gareth Davies, Charles Grounds, Josh McConville, Adam Dunn, Gary Clark Jr., Shonka Dukureh, Charles Andre Allen, Chaydon Jay, Tony Nixon, Christian McCarty, Cle Morgan, Greg Powell, Anthony LaPaglia, Mike Bingaman, Elvis Presley, Priscilla Presley, Vernon Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Martin Luther King Jr., Walter Cronkite, Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Charles Manson, Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Paul McCartney
- Director: Baz Luhrmann
Comments
- NestorTheGreat - 9 January 2023
You think you know someone...!
A view of the life of the first pop star from a perspective not clearly seen before. It's the story of a carnie manager that mishandled a revolutionary black-gospel-country singer to death, told by a master entertainer himself, Baz Luhrmann of Moulin Rouge fame!
Austin Butler personifies Elvis down to his spirit! When he sings, it's hard to tell which recording is Elvis and which is the actual version sung by Butler! Even in close-ups the resemblance is amazing, where some angles are inseparable from the real thing: so similar they are that in closing the film they disperse stock footage in-between the set pics and it takes one a while to figure which is which!
The pace is perfectly set with the amazing soundtrack using other artists that borrow from black music as well: from Dua Lipa to Eminem! Homages to soul and rock'n'roll greats like BB King and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to name the most well known. It's a fresh and unexpected view of greed, power and abuse in the entertainment industry. How hungry managers, like vampires, suck everything talentful a person has to profit from and then discard like used floss!
Giving Hanks the role of the bad man was a stroke of genius! We like the Colonel, even though we know how he manipulates the poor youth, because it's Tom Hanks under the make-up! But this is no kindly Fred Rogers portrayal. It's a subdued look at a selfish, greedy manipulator taking advantage of a poor sucker (one born everyday)! The American Dream conduced by a psychopath for a naive southerner.
