Sid e Nancy

This movie is not historically accurate. Let's get that out of the way right off the bat. This is not about the history of the Sex Pistols. Details don't matter, this movie is about feeling. Two misguided, deluded outcasts who are so completely, desperately in love, that they won't leave each other, even though they are probably the worst people in the world for each other. They spiral into heroin addiction, (which is NOT glamorized. Some of the scenes with them bunkered down in the Chelsea Hotel are downright disgusting) and one of them is killed, although no one knows how exactly how. Punks are usually the unsentimental type, so they tend to give this film the two-finger salute. Well, screw them. It is a beautiful film, which speaks more honestly about love and addiction than any Oscar-grabbing shite that I can find in the New Release section. Gary Oldman and and Chole Webb are excellent, inhabiting their characters right down to marrow. The era is evoked wonderfully, and the film is littered with gorgeous, iconic images, the best of which being Sid and Nancy kissing in an alleyway while garbage rains down on them from above like rice at a wedding. Also, most people ignore how FUNNY this movie is, despite it's heartbreaking subject matter. This is an enjoyable movie, not a punishment, or a slog through the mud. After seeing this movie, a friend of mine was so moved, she packed up everything she had and moved to London, where she lived on the streets for a year, trying to form a punk band. I'd recommend this movie to anyone, not just punks or Sex Pistols fans. It's appeal is much more universal than that. To me, this movie exemplifies my idea of true love. It isn't always pretty. It can drag you over glass, lead you to your grave, debase, humiliate, and destroy you. But it's a connection so strong that you can't deny it. And it's so beautiful that you really don't care if it kills you.

The brilliant performances of Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb in the title roles propel this bleak and depressing look into the calamitous relationship between Sex Pistols bass player Sid Vicious and American punk rock groupie Nancy Spungen. The characters are introduced to us in tragedy right from the opening scene, casting the rest of the film with a fatalistic sense of impending doom. These are two tortured souls in communion who seem at odds with just about every facet of society -- even the extreme punk rock counter-culture to which they both ostensibly belong.

A major problem with the film (and all the more reason to tip our hats to the two leads) is that Sid and Nancy are written as such abrasive and disagreeable characters, one is hard pressed to relate to them on any meaningful level.

And while the re-creation of their reckless and volatile rebelliousness is quite detailed and credible, we never get a sense of how they came to be so angry and tortured to begin with. Even the smallest glimpse at their inner turmoil would have gone a long way in creating sympathy and concern from the audience. Instead, director Cox relies on the pureness of their genuine love for each other to provide that hook. That strategy succeeds to the extent it does ONLY because of Oldman's and Webb's amazing transformation into these parts.

If you own a DVD player, try to get a hold of the Criterion Collection edition of this film. That disc contains some excellent, revealing footage of the REAL Sid and Nancy that was shot for a contemporary documentary on the Sex Pistols ill-fated 1978 tour of the USA. If nothing else, the footage will increase your appreciation for these two splendid performances.

You really need to ask yourself if you love the Pistols and the general era of the late 70's. If you do, the film will fall flat for you.

The details are all wrong, the key incidents of the band and Sid's involvement with them are way off. The personalities of key people are wrong, some characters just made up, rather sloppily too.

So we can forgive it for being a wholly inaccurate of Sid Vicious' life. Fine, but so then what we are left with is a basic love story. It fails at this too, mostly because Nancy is written out pure spite and misogyny. She is therefore not only unlikable but wholly uninteresting.

You never believe the love story, because quite frankly Nancy isn't really written as a human being, just a series of tropes about junkies and that awful idea that women are shrews that stifle men's creativity.

The truth is Nancy was much more physically beautiful than this film wishes to admit. She was also quite charming, in fact, if you know junkie culture, you know that charm, deadly psychotic charm is a key way to survive and support your habit. None of that is shown here, so that ability for junkies to convince others they are clean, or kind or honest is obliterated.

Nancy was smarter than this film gives credit for (yes even though she was a junkie), with more charisma too and if they had written her that way it would make for a better film.

The real Sid fell in love with a real human being, a flawed one to be sure, but the kind of junkie a lot of us could fall for. In this film she's just a very nasty series of dull, obvious tropes.

Just about everyone intimately involved with the Sex Pistols has disowned this film.

I think there are moments of visual poetry in this film, I think Gary Oldman's performance is excellent, but the script is a Hollywood hackneyed attempt to reduce the Sex Pistols to every stereotype and narrow prejudice those who were never punks have always harbored about the punk movement.

It's sad because there is some real craft to this film, it had tremendous potential, but ultimately you can just never believe Sid would fall for this less-than-human harpy. Sad because there's a real reason Nancy swept Sid off his feet.

The truth, in this case, is not only stranger than fiction, it was also far more compelling.

Some films tend to glorify rock and roll by showing off its glamorous side full of adventure and wonder. Sid and Nancy does no such thing. Instead it exposes the dirty, grimy, seedy underbelly of punk rock which is full of violence and drugs. Gary Oldman plays Sid Vicious, the bassist for British punk rock group the Sex Pistols. The film chronicles his life from when he meets his junky girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to the tragic demise of that relationship. It is a loud, mean, ugly, and crass film that perfectly captures all that the Sex Pistols stood for... anarchy. Filled with all sorts of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Sid and Nancy is a seriously wild ride.

If there's anything that makes this film, it's Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. These two are incredible, Oldman more so. Oldman captures the self destructive tendencies of Sid excellently and takes it to a frighteningly believable extreme. It is a terrifying and shocking experience to watch him run amuck in this film, spray painting walls, nonstop drinking, shooting heroin every chance he gets, burning houses, etc. He is the true essence of anarchy, and yet somehow we feel sympathy for him. This is solely because of Nancy, the girlfriend. She is a character you love to hate. She is a pathetic excuse for a human being, always whining to get her way and her drugs, never contributing anything positive to Sid's life, and always screaming about her own problems. It is sickening and it makes the film all the more twisted and engrossing as we watch such self destruction unfold on screen.

It's not easy to tell a story where your two main characters are so easily hateable, but somehow this film does it. I think it is because of the balance between Nancy and Sid that we feel compelled to pity Sid and despise Nancy, making the film engaging in an offbeat and slightly deranged way. Their story is so backwards and so wretchedly obscene that we have to be interested in it somehow. It starts off simply enough. The Sex Pistols are all about anarchy and they go around beating people up, cursing, drinking, and all that sort of thing. But it isn't until Sid meets Nancy that things really start to explode as the story falls deeper and deeper into a twisted fit of depravity. Thing get worse and worse for the two as the film progresses and Sid's life slowly crumbles around him, with him too drunk or too high to even notice. The film does lag a little bit towards the middle as the conversations between Nancy and Sid begin to get a little repetitive, but we are then hit by an expected yet still powerful ending that closes out the film at just the right tone and atmosphere.

There is really nothing sane or reasonable about Sid and Nancy. It envelopes true chaos and discourse through the life of one man and his ridiculous girlfriend. It is a chore to watch this film as it does chronicle a life full of the most horrible habits and attitudes imaginable, but if you can stomach it all then Sid and Nancy is a fantastic film to experience. I loved this film and was truly fascinated by it. It displays a lifestyle a would never want to live. Instead, I only want to learn about it in vulgar detail from a great film like Sid and Nancy.

Finally upgraded from VHS to the special edition DVD of this Alex Cox film about the ill fated Sid Vicious & his honey Nancy Spungen.

Watched it twice in fact , just had to hear the commentary from Cox because he is a director who I admire for trying to tap into the conscious of the subject he tackles.

As an old punk myself it would be easy for me to be biased and lean with a nostalgic slant with the film, but truth is this film doesn't glamorise the duo because they are portrayed as the pathetic self destructive couple they were. The film perfectly captures the time frame of what is indisputably the music and cultural phenomenon known as Punk Rock, the only blight on this great piece of work is the ending, which as Cox agrees is far too romanticised after the harshness the viewer has just sat thru. Yet this film ranks as one of the most honest and frank music biography movies out on the market, and I urge anyone who stays away from it because of an aversion to Punk and it's offshoots to seek it out ASAP.

The acting from Gary Oldman & Chloe Webb is nothing short of amazing, the photography from Roger Deakins is very impressive......

...witness a scene as Vicious leaves a New Jersey prison and walks across a deserted scrap heap with New York prominent in the background, the twin towers cloaked in cloud . The direction is smart, funny, and handled perfectly {till that ending }, and the music arrangement is done adroitly by all involved, but I have to say that viewing it now and hearing Joe Strummer sing Love Kills at the closing credits gives me an added emotional kicker {SO YES A LITTLE BIAS HERE FROM ME }.

8/10