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| Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as punk lovers Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in Cox classic. |
Sid and Nancy (1986)
Dir. Alex Cox
Scr. Cox and Abbe Wool
Starring: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman
Review By Greg Klymkiw
It seems inevitable that the wildly, strangely romantic tragic biopic Sid and Nancy would be Alex Cox's sophomore feature after his astonishing 1984 debut with the punk masterpiece Repo Man. Veering from an almost neo-realist 70s-style nihilism to a whacked-out druggie comedy to a borderline surreal presentation of a world gone completely nuts, Repo Man now feels like the ultimate 80s American film. Cox's picture, with its aimless punk played by Emilio Estevez finding his niche as a repo man with the sage Harry Dean Stanton, virtually spat in the face of the feel-goody-two-shoes of the execrable John Hughes teen dramedies and the sprawling, noisy, state-of-the-art macho action and adventure films that populated that often-wretched decade of cinema.
The hallucinogenic properties Cox brought to bear upon his first feature continued unabated with this grim, grimy love story twixt the legendary Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman), bassist of The Sex Pistols and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Though the screenplay by Cox and co-writer Abbe Wool hits many tried and true biopic beats, the film ultimately excels during its many flights of fancy and the clearly oddball properties of a loving, domestic partnership against the backdrop of addiction, substance abuse and the sheer anarchy of the late 70s period of punk rock.
The film begins with the early rise to success of the band managed by Malcolm McLaren (David Hayman) and doesn't waste time getting Sid together with Nancy. They're young, they're in love and they're hooked on heroin. They're also inseparable - so much so that their couple-status begins to upset the applecart of the band. Once The Sex Pistols are on tour in America, things go from bad to worse. The group breaks up. Sid and Nancy continue as a couple whilst Sid attempts to launch a solo career.
And then, tragedy strikes in the squalidly legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Love hurts and it most definitely doesn't last forever and death - violent death at that, has a bad habit of ending the joy and most of all, the pain.
As with Repo Man, Cox has a definitely unique eye on America and in Sid and Nancy, he delivers a skewed world through the eyes of these loving drug addicts (thanks to the astonishing work of cinematographer Roger Deakins and especially, Gary Oldman's star-making performance).
One of the most poignantly addled moments in the film comes when Nancy declares: "I hate my fuckin' life." Loving Sid responds: "This is just a rough patch. Things'll be much better when we get to America, I promise." Nancy looks blankly at him and matter-of-factly responds: "We're in America. We've been here a week."
Oh yeah.
Love hurts, alright. Especially when you don't know where you are. Or who you are.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars
Sid and Nancy is available as DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION on the Criterion Collection in a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray, an alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray, Two audio commentaries: one from 1994 featuring cowriter Abbe Wool, actors Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, cultural historian Greil Marcus, filmmakers Julien Temple and Lech Kowalski, and musician Eliot Kidd; the other from 2001 featuring cowriter-director Alex Cox and actor Andrew Schofield England’s Glory, a 1987 documentary on the making of Sid & Nancy, Infamous 1976 Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols on British television, Rare telephone interview from 1978 with Sid Vicious, Interviews with Vicious and Nancy Spungen from the 1980 documentary D.O.A.: A Right of Passage, Archival interviews and footage, plus an essay by author Jon Savage and a 1986 piece compiled by Cox about Vicious, Spungen, and the making of the film.
