Review: Kill Your Darlings (2013)

“Some things, once you’ve loved them, become yours forever./And if you try to let them go… /They only circle back and return to you./They become part of who you are…”
– Allen Ginsberg

SYNOPSIS: A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. – via IMDB

Kill Your Darlings is a good biographical drama. I remember when it came some people had written it off as slow and dull, so I eventually ended up putting this off for a while. Let me tell you, I am glad I finally got to it. I thought that it was a solid film that was well shot and studded with an exceptional cast that delivered fantastic performances all round. Dane DeHaan was mesmerising as Lucien Carr. Everything about him oozed a certain vulnerability, yet he was confident and was incredibly sensual. He exuded confidence, drew you in, made you fall in love with him too, yet have your illusions broken the same time as others. He really was perfectly cast. Daniel Radcliffe impressed me again, which is no surprise.

Take him out of Harry Potter and he is amazing, I think he has some real talent. He was timid, afraid, intelligent, and soon he just grew into a whole different type of person with Lucien. Not in a bad way, either, it is just that he came out of his shell. It was good to see Michael C Hall in something again, I enjoy his work. Jack Huston played Jack Kerouac very well, I do quite like him as an actor and wish he was in more things. I am not the most clued up on the history involved with this, though it interested me enough to do some reading at some point. Maybe I was more fond of this due to liking literature, writing, thinking outside the box, all of that, and while it might not have been put together as well as it could have been and misses some things here and there, I had a good time watching this, and can recommend it, if not for the performances alone.