Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Julien Temple's second documentary profiling punk rock pioneers the Sex Pistols is an enlightening, entertaining trip back to a time when the punk movement was just discovering itself. Featuring archival footage, never-before-seen performances, rehearsals, and recording sessions as well as interviews with group members who lived to tell the tale--including the one and only John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten).
Temple's documentary benefits from extraordinary archival footage and a genuinely cinematic visual approach—intercutting performance clips, newsreel, and shadow-lit interview segments with real flair, earning it a high Cinematography mark. The retrospective structure gives the surviving Pistols space to reflect with honesty and occasional poignancy, and the film corrects the more dismissive tone of Temple's earlier 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.' However, the plotting of the narrative follows a fairly conventional rise-and-fall documentary arc, and while the subject matter is inherently fascinating, the film doesn't radically reinvent the music documentary form. Acting is N/A in the traditional sense but the candor of the interviewees (particularly Lydon) registers as genuine and above average. The ending, covering the band's implosion and Sid Vicious's death, is emotionally resonant but not especially surprising given the well-known history.