Midas Man

Paul McCartney once said, “If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian Epstein.” What Joe A. Stephenson’s Midas Man shows us is that this truly was the case.

Born into a family of successful retailers in Liverpool, Epstein displayed a knack for selling from a young age and was put in charge of the family’s vintage store. With a taste for modern music, he began selling records and created a thriving business, but there was to be one afternoon in Liverpool’s Cavern Club that would change his life forever. Midas Man follows the rollercoaster ride that ensued for Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) and the Beatles from 1961 until his death 1967, as the entrepreneur takes the band from Liverpool all the way to international stardom.

Epstein was renowned for being stylish, charming and incredibly eloquent, and all of these mannerisms are superbly portrayed by Fortune-Lloyd who takes this movie by the horns and acts as a bridge between the narrative and the viewer. The film does well to harness the energy and feel of the 1960s Merseybeat sound with the use of music (albeit very little Beatles) and creative visuals, consisting of archive and reenacted scenes from history, as well as some chirpy dialogue.

No one represented the Beatles like Epstein did. He was a workaholic who put his heart and soul into making the band famous, and then proceeded to do the same with his other artists like Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black. While Midas Man does its best to put him on a pedestal, the movie falls into the trap of becoming a Beatles biopic as much as an Epstein one. The tributes to the great man and his achievements in the music industry don’t go far enough, floating through periods of his short career and eventually rattling through a number of the latter years through the form of narrative monologues from Fortune-Lloyd, which while well illustrated, lose a lot of potential character development in the process.

The choice to break the fourth wall is also a jarring and unnecessary device, and it could be argued that the film would stand just as well without the need for Epstein to hold the viewer’s hand and tell them how he was feeling at certain moments in his life. This mechanism might have been best used when exploring his sexuality and the oppression and vilification the gay community experienced during his life, but the film doesn’t handle his personal life with any particular grace.

On the whole, Midas Man is still a solid and enjoyable movie and credit must be given to the team for getting the project across the line at all after the departure of two previous directors and a two-year shooting period. The cast do an excellent job with their characters, but you are left wishing for something else to commemorate the wonderful yet short life of one of the music industry’s greats.

Guy Lambert

Midas Man is released on Prime Video on 30^th October 2024.

Watch the trailer for Midas Man here: