What's it like to live in the shadow of a superstar? To be the band to The Man? To back the big ones?
Hired Gun (7.1/10 on IMDB) makes an attempt to go behind the leading men and women and interview the musicians who help them record and perform their material live. It's got a heavy emphasis on rock music which is what lured me in to watching it on Saturday evening. The cameos are everything here, and the film did a good job of talking to a nice cross section of seasoned and new-to-the-scene players. Guitarists represent heavily, but there's some bass player and drummer content as well.
The stories from Lukather were, as per his usual story telling style, laugh-out-loud funny. And he told a new one (to me) I hadn't heard before. His segments were cut really well with the other story teller making them even more interesting.
It went into sufficient depth with the various artists to make me feel like I heard a complete story. A usually complaint of mine with music docs is they're too light on the talking and stories, a little too heavy on the long pulls on still images. Not so with Hired Gun.
While it's not put together with the same polish or focused narrative that 20 Feet From Stardom has, it's still a pretty enjoyable 2 hours and you get to hear from rock musicians who are on their A game and not usually offered a chance to speak because they're backing others and not fronting a thing.
The tone of the film is interesting. Specifically, the tone shift as the movie progresses is worth paying attention to and I won't say any more than that.
If I'm making oberservations, the "guns" do perform some "all guns" tunes and they're technically interesting, but otherwise kind of bland. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but it says something about being amazing and being a best-selling artist not being even remotely connected as far as skill sets.
It's streaming on Amazon Prime here:
Amazon product ASIN B073RFNY3C
Hired Gun (7.1/10 on IMDB) makes an attempt to go behind the leading men and women and interview the musicians who help them record and perform their material live. It's got a heavy emphasis on rock music which is what lured me in to watching it on Saturday evening. The cameos are everything here, and the film did a good job of talking to a nice cross section of seasoned and new-to-the-scene players. Guitarists represent heavily, but there's some bass player and drummer content as well.
The stories from Lukather were, as per his usual story telling style, laugh-out-loud funny. And he told a new one (to me) I hadn't heard before. His segments were cut really well with the other story teller making them even more interesting.
It went into sufficient depth with the various artists to make me feel like I heard a complete story. A usually complaint of mine with music docs is they're too light on the talking and stories, a little too heavy on the long pulls on still images. Not so with Hired Gun.
While it's not put together with the same polish or focused narrative that 20 Feet From Stardom has, it's still a pretty enjoyable 2 hours and you get to hear from rock musicians who are on their A game and not usually offered a chance to speak because they're backing others and not fronting a thing.
The tone of the film is interesting. Specifically, the tone shift as the movie progresses is worth paying attention to and I won't say any more than that.
If I'm making oberservations, the "guns" do perform some "all guns" tunes and they're technically interesting, but otherwise kind of bland. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but it says something about being amazing and being a best-selling artist not being even remotely connected as far as skill sets.
It's streaming on Amazon Prime here:
Amazon product ASIN B073RFNY3C
