Good biopic marred by addition of pointless inaccuracies

Rating: 7/10 (22 September 2019)

Rami Makel plays Freddy Mercury, flamboyant front man of the rock group Queen, from the legendary band's seminal years to his early death from AIDS-related complications. The film is generally very good, with an excellent cast (especially Makel and Gwilym Lee, who plays guitarist Brian May), great music, and a nice period feel. Mercury was an astonishing stage presence, and the story of his life is fascinating, so it's beyond me why the film-makers had to make up nonsense like the band breaking up and reforming just before Live-Aid (in reality they toured just weeks before the massive charity gig) and Geldof having to be talked into allowing the band to play as a last minute addition to the schedule, or change the time-line of Mercury's AIDS diagnosis. Yes, I know that it's not a documentary, but making up facts for 'dramatic effect' diminishes the value of the film as a biography and shows a marked lack of faith in the material or the writers. I am surprised that band mates May and Roger Taylor allowed the pointless revisionism, especially as they professed to be concerned about 'Mercury's legacy'. A '9' film demoted to a '7' for 'fake news'.