Amazon.com video review:
After the cultish success of Repo Man, maverick
director Alex Cox made the film that remains his masterpiece--a loud,
brash, abrasive, painful, funny, and utterly brilliant screen
biography of British punk rocker Sid Vicious and his American
girlfriend Nancy Spungen. As played to perfection by Gary Oldman and
Chloe Webb, Sid and Nancy are made for each other, serving their
mutual strengths and weaknesses and rising with the punk-rock fame of
Sid's group, the Sex Pistols, while falling into the ultimately lethal
pit of drug abuse. Cox doesn't pull any punches or compromise the
unsavory aspects of this passionate love story, so the film presents a
harsh mix of emotional and physical anguish tempered by the very
poignant and genuine love shared by its tormented central
characters. Through it all, the film emerges as an intimate and yet
oddly epic chronicle of punk's glory days of anarchic sex, drugs and
rock & roll. It's as dynamic and confidently directed as any screen
biography before or since, no less fascinating for its unpleasant
aspects as for the touching emotions at its very human core. The
Criterion Collection DVD includes audio commentary by Oldman, Webb,
rock critic Greil Marcus, and others. --Jeff Shannon
