---
title: "Back to Black"
year: 2024
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/back-to-black"
fi1m_id: "back-to-black"
imdb_id: "tt21261712"
tmdb_id: 998846
wikidata_id: "Q116507926"
fi1m_score: 48
critics_score: 42
critics_reviews: 19
published: "2026-09-09"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:59.578943+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Back to Black (2024)

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson · 2h 02m · MPA R · Music, History, Drama

## Identity

Back to Black

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/back-to-black
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** back-to-black
- **IMDb ID:** tt21261712
- **TMDB ID:** 998846
- **Wikidata ID:** Q116507926
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21261712/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/998846, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q116507926

**Fi1m score: 48** · Critics 42 from 19 reviews

*In a sentence:* Two hours in Camden and the only thing that ever gets darker is the eyeliner

> Marisa Abela is good enough to make you stop checking her against the real thing, and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film is too fond of everyone in it to tell her story. A soft-lit romance where a hard life should be; watch it for her.

## Synopsis

Amy (Marisa Abela) is a north London teenager who sings jazz standards in her Nan’s kitchen and has no interest in being anyone else. Her grandmother Cynthia (Lesley Manville) taught her the records; her father Mitch (Eddie Marsan) drives a cab and believes in her; her mother Janis (Juliet Cowan) worries from the doorway. A young manager, Nick Shymansky (Sam Buchanan), gets her a deal and a first album. Then, in a Camden pub, she meets Blake (Jack O’Connell), and the film follows what happens between them, and what it does to her songs. Sam Taylor-Johnson directs from a script by Matt Greenhalgh.

## Review

Sam Taylor-Johnson and her writer Matt Greenhalgh have made a film about Amy Winehouse that runs 122 minutes and has decided, early and firmly, that it is a love story. The first half hour sets out the household: a sing-song in the front room, Cynthia (Lesley Manville) at the piano, Mitch (Eddie Marsan) beaming, Amy (Marisa Abela) taking the high line and meaning it. Nick Shymansky (Sam Buchanan) turns up with a car and a contract, and the songs start arriving. Then Blake (Jack O’Connell) puts a coin in a jukebox in a Camden pub, and the film has found what it wants to be about.

Abela is the reason to be here, and she is a real reason. She does not do an impression, or not for long. The walk is there, and the sideways look, and the way of making a compliment sound like a challenge, but after ten minutes we stopped measuring her against the footage and simply watched a person. The singing is her own, and while it does not have the low, heavy pull of the records, it is never embarrassing, which in a film like this is most of the battle. When she stands in a small club and gets a crowd to go quiet, we believed the crowd.

We were moved, more than we had planned to be, by the scenes in her Nan’s kitchen. Manville plays Cynthia as a woman who has been glamorous and knows it, and who watches her granddaughter with a mixture of pride and something colder, as if she can see where this goes. There is a shot of the two of them at a table with a pot of tea, not saying much, and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis let a single line of strings sit under it and go no further. It is the quietest thing in the film and the truest.

The craft around the edges is careful. Polly Morgan lights Camden in a warm amber that makes even the wet pavements look kind, and Sarah Greenwood’s flats and pubs have the right clutter: ashtrays, a pool table, a mattress on the floor. PC Williams’s costumes track the change from jeans and vests to the beehive and the little dresses without ever making a point of it. Martin Walsh cuts the years as a set of jumps, and the songs act as chapter headings, so that every stretch of the life is there to explain a lyric.

That is also the problem. Greenhalgh’s script keeps stopping to show us where a line came from, a row here, a name on a wall there, and the effect is of a very expensive footnote. Nothing in the writing is interested in how she worked, who she listened to, or what a studio day was like; the music happens to her, like weather. And the film is remarkably gentle with the men. Marsan’s Mitch is a worried dad and nothing more. O’Connell is charming, and it is easy to see the pull, but the script never asks him a hard question, and it is not much harder on her. Everyone here is doing their best. That is a comfortable view of a life that did not end comfortably.

The second half goes where you know it goes, and takes turns we will not describe, but we can say that the tone barely darkens with the material. Morgan keeps the amber, the strings stay soft, and the flashbulbs outside the flat are shot as spectacle rather than assault. By then we were restless, and then we were irritated at being restless, because the actress in the middle of it was working hard and the film kept looking away from her.

Greenhalgh wrote [*Control*](https://film.one/film/control), which managed a musician’s short, bad life in 122 minutes without flinching, and Taylor-Johnson’s *Nowhere Boy* found a real edge in a young John Lennon. Set beside those, this is the gentler, safer film, and beside Asif Kapadia’s documentary *Amy* it is a brochure. The reviews so far have been rough, and we understand why, though we think they undersell what Abela and Manville do in a kitchen.

See it if you want two hours in the company of a very good performance and can forgive the film around it. If you want to understand what happened to Amy Winehouse, the documentary is still there, and it is not afraid of the answer.

*Fi1m score 48, published 9 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics agree on one thing: Marisa Abela. Nearly every review, including the harshest, praises her performance, singling out the voice, the mannerisms and the physical commitment, and several say she is the only reason to watch.

The reservations cluster around the script and the approach. The film is called sanitised, formulaic and cautious, more interested in the romance with Blake Fielder-Civil than in the songs or how they were made, and several critics object that it goes easy on the men in Winehouse’s life while leaving her at the centre of a story that is not really about her. Little White Lies and Collider go furthest, treating this as a distortion of the record rather than tact. The spread is wide. Deadline and NME find an honest film that gives Winehouse her own agency; the Guardian finds it forgiving and heartfelt. Sight and Sound is the rare dissenter on the performance, arguing Abela’s singing does not match Winehouse’s command.

## Straight answers

**Is Back to Black worth watching?**

*Back to Black* is worth watching for Marisa Abela's performance as Amy Winehouse and not for much else, and we scored it 48. Sam Taylor-Johnson's film is a soft-lit love story that is gentle with everyone in it, so it never gets close to what happened to her. See it for Abela and Lesley Manville; come for the story and you will be short-changed.

**How long is Back to Black, and what is it rated?**

*Back to Black* runs 2h 02m and is rated R by the MPA in the US. It is a music and history film.

**Where can I watch Back to Black in the US?**

*Back to Black* is available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from $3.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is Back to Black, and is it suitable for children?**

*Back to Black* is a 15 in the UK and an R in the US, and it is a drama about addiction and a damaging relationship rather than a frightening or violent film. The review notes that the tone stays soft even as the material darkens, so it is not gruelling to sit through, but the subject matter is adult and it is not one for children.

**How does Back to Black compare to Amy?**

*Back to Black* is the gentler and weaker film; Asif Kapadia's documentary [*Amy*](https://film.one/film/amy) looks straight at the things the drama turns away from. The drama gives you a fine central performance and a warm, amber Camden; the documentary gives you Winehouse herself, funny and absorbed in music, and does not flinch from the ending. If you want to understand what happened to her, watch *Amy*.

**What should I watch after Back to Black?**

After *Back to Black*, try [*Amy*](https://film.one/film/amy) (2015, Fi1m 81): Kapadia’s documentary looks straight at the things this film turns away from. Then [*Control*](https://film.one/film/control) (2007, Fi1m 80): Greenhalgh’s Ian Curtis script, shot in black and white and with no comfort in it; and [*La Vie en Rose*](https://film.one/film/la-vie-en-rose) (2007, Fi1m 66): Marion Cotillard’s Piaf, a biopic that lets its singer be difficult and still loves her.

### Reviews we read (27)

- **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman (65/100, inferred): Marisa Abela nails Winehouse in every look, mood, and note, delivering an authentic force-of-nature performance that anchors the film. The dysfunctional love story keeps the audience at a remove, making the portrait authentic yet clinical and detached rather than powerfully cathartic. [Read](https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/back-to-black-review-marisa-abela-sam-taylor-johnson-1235963795/)
- **Radio Times**, Terry Staunton (3/5): The critic says the biopic struggles to get under Amy’s skin and offers only snapshots of her malaise despite Abela’s extraordinary performance; the music sequences are a highlight but the personal story remains enigmatic. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/back-to-black-review/)
- **Total Film**, James Mottram (60/100, inferred): A competent but occasionally clunky biopic that works best as a love story and benefits from Abela's terrific vocal and physical performance. It holds back on the darker aspects of Winehouse's decline compared to the documentary Amy. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/back-to-black-review/)
- **Empire**, Hayley Campbell (50/100, inferred): A solid central performance from Abela is let down by a weak script that cherry-picks facts and tells us little new about Winehouse. The film fails to explore her artistic process or what she saw in Fielder-Civil. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/back-to-black/)
- **The New York Times**, Alissa Wilkinson (40/100, inferred): The film fails to center Amy Winehouse’s perspective as intended and softens or shuffles facts in ways that rewrite her history. Marisa Abela’s committed performance and a few sequences, especially the pub meet-cute, stand out as bright spots amid the shortcomings. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/movies/back-to-black-review.html)
- **Time Out**, Phil de Semlyen (40/100, inferred): The review criticizes the biopic’s pedestrian script full of spelled-out origin stories and its soft-soaped approach, noting Abela handles the impossible task solidly but the film ultimately hits too many off-keys. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/back-to-black-2024)
- **The i Paper**, Francesca Steele (30/100, inferred): The film is a lightweight, mawkish and cloying biopic unworthy of its subject. Abela's performance is the main point of praise for capturing Amy's voice and mannerisms. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/back-to-black-review-amy-winehouse-biopic-2999347)
- **Vulture** (30/100, inferred): The critic argues that the film does not like Amy Winehouse much as an artist or person, criticizing the script and direction for diminishing her and focusing on absolving the men in her life while leaving her centerless. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/review-back-to-black-doesnt-like-amy-winehouse-very-much.html)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Katie Walsh (25/100, inferred): The biopic is shallow and reductive, offering no real curiosity about Winehouse beyond blaming her toxic relationship and self-destruction. Abela’s fully committed vocal and physical performance is praised, but the film mishandles the songs and stays on the surface. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-05-15/back-to-black-review-amy-winehouse-movie)
- **Evening Standard**, Hamish MacBain (1/5): A poor piece of filmmaking that fails to capture Winehouse's artistry or story accurately, with absurd choices around music and characterisation. The sympathetic portrayal of Blake Fielder-Civil and final scene are singled out for particular criticism. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/back-to-black-movie-review-amy-winehouse-biopic-marisa-abela-jack-oconnell-b1150130.html)
- **Little White Lies**, Rógan Graham (1/1/1): The critic calls the film a cruel, irredeemable hash that reduces Winehouse to a friendless addict and tabloid joke driven by a bad relationship, complaining that it ignores her artistry, collaborators and exploitation while offering no new insight. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/back-to-black)
- **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh (★★☆☆☆): The film is twee and ghoulish, a dispiriting syrupy biopic that paints Amy as a chronic romantic but mostly misses her moxie, wit and demons. It makes a fearful combination of writer and director, presenting scenes like a cartoon strip with steady pours of soft focus. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/19a1484a-3818-46e9-81bc-3dd94bb897ae)
- **Screen Daily**: The critic finds Taylor-Johnson’s account pallid and pedestrian, ironing out thorny issues with little new to say, though it provides an impressive platform for star Marisa Abela and is never more than Amy Lite. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/back-to-black-review/5192250.article)
- **Sight and Sound**: The critic finds the biopic falls short of its aspirations to focus on the music despite a strong lead performance and visual care, with the script hampered by caution and Abela’s singing not fully matching Winehouse’s command. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/back-black-amy-winehouse-biopic-fails-its-aspirations-focus-music)
- **The Guardian**: The film is a gentle, forgiving and heartfelt dramatisation more interested in romance and creativity than demons or blame. It is buoyed by an extraordinary, sweet-natured lead performance from Marisa Abela that conveys Amy's tenderness and youth. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/09/back-to-black-review-gentle-amy-winehouse-biopic-buoyed-by-extraordinary-lead-performance)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Leslie Felperin: The critic finds the biopic flawed but affecting overall, with Marisa Abela’s intensely physical performance as the key element that lifts the film and makes it frequently very affecting. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/back-to-black-review-amy-winehouse-biopic-marisa-abela-1235869498/)
- **The Telegraph**: The biopic is compassionate but evasive and overly cautious, ducking away from saying anything truly enlightening about Amy's life or addictions. Marisa Abela does a sterling job as the troubled star in this narrow-focus drama on her relationship. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/back-to-black-amy-winehouse-review-marisa-abela/)
- **The Times** (★★☆☆☆): The film is too tame, too tasteful and too frightened of alienating fans, distilling the vivid hot mess of Amy's life into a middling, lukewarm mess. It aims to turn her toxic relationship into Camden's answer to Sid and Nancy but ends on a high note. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/the-best-films-reviewed-this-week-back-to-black-and-civil-war-lxvzdb5sh)
- **Deadline**, Damon Wise (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as a refreshingly honest biopic that gives agency to Winehouse and portrays her decisions as her own, with a hard edge. It singles out Marisa Abela's performance and the complex portrait of the artist for praise. [Read](https://deadline.com/2024/04/back-to-black-review-sam-taylor-johnson-marisa-abela-amy-winehouse-1235878213/)
- **NME**, Nick Levine (4/5): The critic praises Marisa Abela's performance capturing Winehouse’s mix of self-belief and frailty and her singing; singles out the evocative scenes and the deft handling of the media spotlight and ending as positive, while noting it's a worthy biopic that reminds of her spirit. [Read](https://www.nme.com/reviews/film-reviews/back-to-black-amy-winehouse-marisa-abela-3615314)
- **The Ringer**, Justin Charity (50/100, inferred): The biopic is mediocre and unremarkable, formulaic like most biopics, easy on controversial figures in Winehouse's life. Abela and O'Connell have chemistry, but it doesn't capture the raw essence needed. [Read](https://theringer.com/2024/05/21/movies/amy-winehouse-back-to-black-movie-review-meaning-biopic)
- **Digital Spy**, Ian Sandwell (2/5): The critic finds the film sanitised and surface-level, failing to capture nuance in relationships, though praises Abela's singing and performance; complains about tonal mismatch and focus on romance over depth. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a60425719/back-to-black-review-amy-winehouse/)
- **HeyUGuys**, Linda Marric (2/5): The review criticizes the biopic for being contrived and disjointed, absolving the family while blaming tabloids, but praises Abela's performance and supporting cast like Manville. It notes the story needs more distance. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/back-to-black-review/)
- **Film Stories**, James Harvey (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the biopic sanitised and formulaic, failing to capture the tragedy or depth of Winehouse's life despite a strong performance by Marisa Abela. They single out Abela's performance for praise but wish the film hadn't been made. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/reviews/back-to-black-review-the-amy-winehouse-biopic-is-a-misjudged-tragedy/)
- **Collider**, Emma Kiely (2/10): The critic calls it a hollow, ugly, and inaccurate biopic that distorts the truth by favoring the men in Amy Winehouse's life. Praises Marisa Abela's committed performance but criticizes the focus on personal relationships over her talent and the poor direction. [Read](https://collider.com/back-to-black-review-amy-winehouse/)
- **The Wrap** (20/100, inferred): The critic finds the biopic bland and formulaic, criticizing its lack of passion, insight, or cinematic boldness, and singles out the generic storytelling and failure to say anything meaningful about Winehouse's life for complaint. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/back-to-black-review-amy-winehouse/)
- **Paste**, Jade Gomez (4.0): The film sensationalizes and shallowly portrays Amy Winehouse's life, focusing too much on her downfall and relationships. Praises Marisa Abela's performance as a bright spot amid the flaws in pacing and handling of addiction. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/amy-winehouse/back-to-black-review)

## Details

- **Director:** Sam Taylor-Johnson
- **Director:** Sam Taylor-Johnson
- **Screenplay:** Matt Greenhalgh
- **Cinematography:** Polly Morgan
- **Editor:** Martin Walsh
- **Music:** Nick Cave, Warren Ellis
- **Production design:** Sarah Greenwood
- **Costume design:** PC Williams
- **Producer:** Alison Owen, Debra Hayward, Nicky Kentish Barnes
- **Cast:** Marisa Abela as Amy; Jack O'Connell as Blake; Eddie Marsan as Mitch; Lesley Manville as Cynthia; Juliet Cowan as Janis; Sam Buchanan as Nick Shymansky; Pete Lee-Wilson as Perfume Paul; Thelma Ruby as Great Auntie Renee
- **Runtime:** 2h 02m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 17 May 2024
- **Genres:** Music, History, Drama
- **Budget:** $30 million
- **Box office:** $51 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlW-jEscGgM

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd

*Checked 2026-09-10.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, CZ, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IT, JP, MX, MY, NL, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Amy* (2015), Fi1m 81: Kapadia’s documentary looks straight at the things this film turns away from. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/amy.md)
- *Control* (2007), Fi1m 80: Greenhalgh’s Ian Curtis script, shot in black and white and with no comfort in it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/control.md)
- *La Vie en Rose* (2007), Fi1m 66: Marion Cotillard’s Piaf, a biopic that lets its singer be difficult and still loves her. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/la-vie-en-rose.md)
- *Love & Mercy* (2014): Brian Wilson in the studio and in the wreckage; a music film about actually making music.
- *Sid and Nancy* (1986): Alex Cox’s punk romance, filthy and unsentimental, the film this one keeps glancing at.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/back-to-black