The new millennium begins with this rowdy rockumentary, taking over from where the earlier Sex Pistols mockumentary The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) left off, this time shifting the perspective to the surviving band members. The founding punk ensemble managed to stay together for a mere two and a half years. Their journey began from the meager circumstances of Shepherd’s Bush of London and culminated in a messy US tour at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The belligerent rise to fame marked by loogie-hocking, puking, mangled guitars, and shit-streaked underpants escalated into total destruction. The zit-faced and studded group that pissed on the slippers of conservative British society managed to lash their way through to the center of rebellion while challenging the pompous tradition of patriarchy with devotion. Clips of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III accent the film, presenting his portrayal as a symbolic precursor.
But the dark comedy takes a tragic turn when it comes to the band’s bass player – a catatonic heroin junkie and an almost completely musically talentless “youth icon”. Pathetically hazy in his swastika shirt and halfway into a drug-induced coma, Sid Vicious staggers toward chaos and death. Sunken into the shadows, a regretful Johnny Rotten sheds real tears as he looks back on the past: “I could take on England, but I couldn’t take on one heroin addict.”
Lauri Timonen