‘I’ll never look like Barbie. Barbie doesn’t have bruises...’
It’s weird that anyone even knows the name, Sid Vicious. By all accounts, he was a terrible musician, an awful human being and a total drag to be around. His story is perhaps the ultimate example of right place right time. Or maybe wrong place wrong time depending on your viewpoint…
Alex Cox’s incendiary biopic follows Vicious (Gary Oldman) and his tempestuous relationship with Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). We also have appearances from Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield), Malcolm McLaren (David Hayman) and other various luminaries of the punk scene.
Firstly, writer-director Cox should be commended for resisting the temptation to glamourise the lifestyle of his subjects. The life shared by Vicious and Spungen is portrayed as being utterly miserable and one of complete squalor. Oldman and Webb make no attempt to make either of their characters sympathetic, with Webb’s shrill and cloying portrayal of Nancy particularly loathsome. Oldman does provide moments of vulnerability for Vicious, but these are wisely kept to a minimum as his self-destructive tendencies are brought to the fore. Both performances are over the top and occasionally hard to stomach, but that is fitting for two people who lived very fast and died very young.
Sid and Nancy does a great job condensing Vicious’s career in the Sex Pistols and his brief solo career in less than two hours, and it also acts as a fitting eulogy for one of the most unlikely rock stars in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Large parts of it are borderline unwatchable, but this is one such occasion when that doesn’t matter. No matter your thoughts on the subject matter, there is no denying this is one of the most iconic music biopics of all time.