Iain Softley’s smart movie about the early days of the Beatles finds an indirect way of getting up close and personal with the music legends; the film-makers couldn’t afford the expense of using the copyrighted Lennon/McCartney songs. A study of the band’s hardworking lives gigging in Hamburg in the early 60s, the film counterintuitively centres on Stuart Sutcliffe (Steven Dorff) – the band member who was destined to die of a brain haemorrhage just as they were on the verge of greatness – and his German girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, played by Sheryl Lee. (This tragic slant may have ...