Salt Lake Tribune Review
"U2 3D" does both in one spectacular package.
This new concert movie captures the South American leg of their "Vertigo" tour, with shows in Buenos Aires, Santiago and Sao Paulo. The band's set list covers both their new songs - like the pulsating opener "Vertigo" - and such anthemic classics as "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and "One."
Co-directors
Catherine Owens (a longtime visual designer for the band) and
Mark Pellington ("The Mothman Prophecies") recapture the feel of being in the house. The swooping cameras divebomb the audience and the long catwalks that allow singer Bono (and in one effective moment, drummer
Larry Mullen Jr.) to prowl halfway into the stadium. The giant video screen behind the band pulsates with images and animation. The smoke machines churn out clouds of colorfully illuminated fog.
And the digital 3D technology - the first time it's been used in a live-action film - brings the band even closer. When Bono stretches his hands up to the heavens, it's as if he's reaching out to us.
Every time
Adam Clayton swings around with his bass, you feel like you have to duck. When Owens and Pellington superimpose one image on another, like a closeup of guitarist
The Edge over a wide shot of the band, the 3D effect is downright beautiful.
But it would all be for naught if U2 didn't present a stage show worthy of such bigger-than-life moviemaking. The band continues to combine rocking music with inspiring lyrics, emotional heft with social consciousness - and this eye-popping movie catches it all.
-- Sean P. Means
The rundown: The band looks and sounds even bigger in 3D, in a concert movie filmed on the South American leg of the "Vertigo" tour. 85 minutes. (S.P.M.)
Synopsis: Hollywood A-list director
Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies, Arlington Road) and newcomer
Catherine Owens team up to break new cinematic ground by co-helming U2 3D -- the first three-dimensional concert film in movie history. The effort intercuts footage culled from several U2 shows on their 2005-2006 Vertigo tour in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Argentina, with Bono,
The Edge, Adam Clayton, and
Larry Mullen Jr. performing before rapt audiences. The picture opens with several thematically light rock songs, such as Beautiful Day and Vertigo, but soon segues into more politically conscious material at the hands of social-change advocate Bono and his bandmates, such as the numbers Bullet the Blue Sky, Love and Peace or Else, and Sunday Bloody Sunday; at one critical point, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is projected high above the audience. Pellington, Owens, and cinematographers Tom Krueger and Peter Anderson make frequent use of a roving camera and multi-layered 3-D effects; they also step away from the approach utilized in the band's previous concert film U2: Rattle and Hum by omitting interviews and focusing exclusively on concert footage. The full version of U2 3D runs 80 minutes; a 56-minute preview version ran out of competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
