Review: Metallica: Through the Never

A Metallica concert plays as a young roadie (Dane DeHaan) has a hellish, almost “Mad Max”-like adventure outside the arena, running an errand.

 

How the hell am I supposed to review this 2013 film from “Predators” director Nimrod Antal? For the most part, it’s a stylishly staged and photographed Metallica concert, and a damn good one, something akin to the brilliant Rolling Stones/Martin Scorsese “Shine a Light” at times, minus the grainy interview footage. I’m a fan of their music, well aside from “Reload” and especially the cheap knock-off “St. Anger”, an album I’ll never fork out the money for to add to my collection (Metallica seem to know the album sucks, there’s no song on that amateurish album played here). But this film wants to be more than a mere concert film, as it tries to tell a fictional story (penned by Antal and the band members themselves, apparently) happening concurrently to the concert. And told really badly, and so intermittently and half-arsed, so as to make one wonder why they even bothered with it in the first place. If this were just a concert film, I’d have no problems recommending this film. That part works, no question. But that’s not what this ultimately is, and while completely watchable, and while the music made sure I had a good time with it, as a film I simply can’t give this a good grade.

 

Perhaps the worst sin of all is that despite the title, the band never plays ‘Through the Never’ at any point. It’s not one of their best songs (but one of my three favourite songs is ‘Of Wolf and Man’, so don’t take my word for it necessarily), but for fuck’s sake, why call it that when you don’t actually play the song? Frankly, I think ‘Wherever I May Roam’, ‘Enter Sandman’, or particularly ‘Ride the Lightning’ would’ve made for better titles. One thing I did genuinely dig about this film is that the set list isn’t quite your standard post-“Black Album” set list where they only play the big hits and a couple from “Death Magnetic” (Their redemption album if you ask me). There’s a lot of “Ride the Lightning” songs on here (including the title track, the awesome ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, and my favourite from the album, ‘Creeping Death’), as well as the best song from “Reload”, ‘The Memory Remains’. We also get ‘Fuel’ from that same album, and although far from my favourite Metallica song, it’s one of the few times that the song being played comes close to working with the goings on outside of the concert with roadie Dane DeHaan getting into vehicular trouble (the rather heavy ‘Cyanide’ from their underrated “Death Magnetic” album also fits the visuals). On the flipside, I was disappointed that when they played the iconic ‘One’ from “…And Justice for All”, we didn’t get a “Johnny Got His Gun” motif, as the use of footage from that film in the band’s first ever music video is part of what made that song what it is and better than what they come up with here.

 

The song choices become more standard after a while (‘Master of Puppets’, ‘Battery’- which is better than ‘Puppets’ if you ask me, ‘Nothing Else Matters’, ‘Enter Sandman’, etc.), but you won’t hear favourites like ‘Seek & Destroy’, ‘The Unforgiven’ ‘Motorbreath’, or ‘Harvester of Sorrow’, interestingly enough, and ‘Hit the Lights’ is a truly bizarre choice to close out the concert (though not the film, which ends with the instrumental ‘Orion’, something for the die-hards). ‘Enter Sandman’ is somewhat overplayed by now (I’ll defend “The Black Album” to anyone, though), but like ‘Fuel’ it’s one of the better mixtures of song and film visuals on show here. For the most part, you don’t get to hear full-length songs here (The excellent ‘Wherever I May Roam’ stops after the intro, strangely), but I honestly didn’t expect to, and we get a lot more of the songs than I thought we would. So I was happy about that, even if it has its downside with the narrative.

 

It’s a nicely staged concert, better-looking than most, even if the front few rows of the crowd and the band don’t appear to be in the same room at the same time, if you catch my drift. The fans don’t behave like they’re really at a Metallica concert, and might have been green-screened in or something. I haven’t heard of any such thing being the case here, but it looked a bit fake to me. They seemed too posed and weren’t head-banging nearly enough (Then again, I wouldn’t head-bang at all if I attended a concert of any kind. But that’s just me. I’m old and an introvert). Perhaps the fact that this was originally intended for 3D viewing (IMAX 3D at that) and I saw it in 2D explains the disconnect/artificial look. It wouldn’t be the first damn time, as loyal readers of mine will understand. But it doesn’t explain the phony crowd behaviour. Also, laser shows are soooo not Metallica. Not in the slightest. They’re more Def Leppard circa 1991-2. I know because I saw Def Leppard in concert when I was 11 (Bloody good rock show too, as I recall).

 

The music is excellent, even if one suspects the audio has probably been ‘sweetened’ somewhat to make the band sound even better than they are (It’s a movie, though, so who really cares?). Also, fans of both Metallica and horror movies will be happy to see guitarist Kirk Hammett playing both a Lugosi “White Zombie” guitar and later a Karloff “Mummy” guitar.

 

Forget the mini-movie/plot, and just enjoy the music (especially if “Ride the Lightning” is your favourite album by the band, as it is for me) because that’s the only worthwhile thing here in this lazy cash-grab by a band already on thin ice in the last couple of decades with fans. Nice try at something a little different, but the plot aspect is so poorly and rarely integrated that it’s pointless and useless. I can’t imagine non-fans getting anything at all out of this and fans can get plenty of filmed Metallica concert videos/DVDs that don’t have the plot stuff tacked on (This has way less swearing than your average Metallica concert as well. No ‘Die, motherfucker, Die!’ during ‘Creeping Death’, disappointingly).

 

I had somewhat of a good time as a fan of the music, but as a film buff…not so much. So, I guess that means an Even Steven rating at best. Terrible ending too, especially if you already own their “Cunning Stunts” video/DVD.

 

Rating: C+