Control (2007)

"Control"
Starring: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton
***/****

Music biopics are usually hit or miss, with Control, director Anton Corbijn uses a promising young actor to carry this film. Sam Riley plays Ian Curtis, the lead singer for Joy Division. If you're into music of the 70's, or music period, you most definitely know of Ian Curtis and the band that he lead into fame long before he took his own life in 1980.

This film is a chronicle of the late Curtis, who married young, and couldn't keep together a stable marriage with his wife Debbie, played by the underrated Samantha Morton. Debbie is a caring and concerned wife, she tries to understand Ian but cannot, shes aches for some kind of emotion to come out of him, but she, nor the audience ever catches a glimpse of it.

The actor Sam Riley, truly commands the screen in this performance. He gets all the mannerism of Curtis on-stage correct, and gives this film its pulse for 120 minutes. The muted chemistry with Riley and Morton is always there, even though they share few words together, just quiet scenes that explain more with silence than dialogue.

The film is shot in black and white and for good reason. It captures the dark and somber tone of the film, as well as the working class atmosphere of Curtis's home town in England.

Control is an absorbing film, film-critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said that, "You don't watch this film, you live this film." That is a great way to summarize this film. During all the concert scenes, the film sucks you in, as you're isolated with Curtis, and the young actor portraying him.

My only problem with the film is that the first hour is much better than the second hour, the pacing got slower in the second hour and I felt less care for the characters by the time the film ended. Even with those flaws, Control is a good film, and one worth seeing.