Life

Overview

In 1955, young photographer Dennis Stock develops a close bond with actor James Dean while shooting pictures of the rising Hollywood star.

Rating

2 Reviews

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  Reno

  5 May 14, 2016

  > The early days of James Dean in the filmdom. It was based on the real life story of a young Hollywood star, especially during his early days of the acting career. In the 50s when a photojournalist was looking for a break, he ended up doing a story on James Dean. Initially who hated him, later gives a nod for the interview and so this story begins that focused on the time they spent together. A simple story, but a very long film. It was neither inspiring nor annoying. It was just like anybody's story around us, that's really boring. Because he was kind of an unfriendly and his tale that told in this film was very dull. Maybe if you like James Dean and his films, especially interested to learn about him, then you might like this film. But to me this biopic was just okay. Neither I enjoyed it, nor disliked. Yet to see his films which are very small numbers, then I might change my mind about this film, so till then what I said will remains. 5/10

• 

  CinemaSerf

  6 Nov 20, 2025

  Maybe the lawyers advised that a biopic on James Dean’s later life might have been too risky, so they instead alighted on this rather uninteresting phase of his life and coupled with two really unremarkable performances leave us with something that could hardly be more soporific. It’s Dane DeHaan who is the enigmatic young starlet being considered by acclaimed director Nicholas Ray (Peter Lucas) for the part that might define him - assuming studio boss Sam Goldwyn (Sir Ben Kingsley) buys in, but the waiting game is proving nerve-wracking for Dean. Meantime, at a similar stage in his own career is budding magazine photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) who’s convinced his editor (Joel Edgerton) that a photo assignment on this aspiring actor is a good idea. Both men have their fair share of baggage but perhaps that might serve to draw them together and befriend, even trust, the other? They do say a photograph speaks a thousand words so maybe at this point we should just spool on to the end where we see some of the world-famous, moodily framed, monochrome pictures of the cigarette smoking Dean and just skip this unimpressive and dialogue heavy outing for two actors who’ve not the slightest degree of chemistry between them as this positively plods along for an almost two hours that tells us virtually nothing new about Dean, and showcases just how mediocre an actor Pattinson is when he’s not just meant to be eye candy. It’s not so much about life, more about dearth - of just about everything interesting.