Product Description

A lacerating love story, Sid & Nancy chronicles the brief, intense attachment of two of punk's most notorious poster children, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Director Alex Cox balances a bleak evocation of star-crossed love with surreal humor and genuine tenderness, creating a compelling portrait of the late '70s punk scene. With brilliant performances by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, the film's haunting imagery and black comedy resonate long after the final frames.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75146 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-10-28
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.75:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 112 minutes

Amazon.com
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. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

A Profile of a Train Wreck.
What I enjoyed most about Sid and Nancy was the profile of the Sex Pistols who (unfortunately) are only a vicarious part of the plot. I know that Johnny Lydon did not approve of this film, but I absolutely loved Schofield's portrayal of him here. In fact, he almost steals the spotlight from the train wreck that is the relationship between the main protagonists. I also thought that technically this film was outstanding. My favorite scene involved the press/party boat. After it was forcibly docked, the shot of Sid and Nancy gliding through the melee was exceptional. This movie has something in common with all period pieces we remember--it is incredibly well-done. My own appreciation for the film, however, was sabotaged by the fact that I was not even remotely interested in the love affair between Sid and Nancy. I found the gradual disintegration of their lives to rather depressing.

Cinema, not Documentary...
Is it full of historic inaccuracies? Sure. Is it an accurate portrayal and timeline of the events as they occured? From time to time. Was it a thoroughly intriguing journey, seen at "ground level" of what is arguably one of the most notorious "crash and burns" stories of our time? Without doubt. Did Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb accurately portray Sid and Nancy? In essence, YES. The soundtrack (provided by ex-Clash member Joe Strummer), the lighting, and settings serve to push you (I have to admit, for me sometimes unwillingly) through the fall and then plummet of Sid and Nancy. The movie was in turn serious, grotesque, cartoonish, erotic, embarassing, fascinating, and beautiful. All of it seemed appropriate. Throughout, I felt I was in a seat, right behind Sid and Nancy's, on a wild roller coaster ride with them. I just seemed inevitable that it ended the way it did. The story never leaves the rollercoaster tracks. The world just seemed to rush by faster and faster, until it is just a blur. You can't help but feel uncomfortable as you watch the lives of these two characters reduced to a hopeless,"from high to high" existence in room 100 of New York's famous Chelsea Hotel. (Watch for Iggy Pop and his wife in a quick cameo in the hallway at the Chelsea) You realize that Sid Vicious is a modern "Everyman" representing every "famous" and non-famous junkie caught in a great downward spiral. The movie provided, for me, unforgettable images. For all of the other elements, this movie is in the end a love story. These two tragic characters are left with only the deep love for each other and addiction. The love was not enough for Nancy and too much for Sid.

More Sid And Nancy Than The Real Nancy and Sid Were
I think Sid & Nancy might just be the best rock-based biographical film yet done. Better than Oliver Stone's The Doors, better than last year's dismal Brian Jones flick whose name isn't worthy of being repeated here. The reason Sid & Nancy rises above the rest can be summed up in one word: talent. Sid & Nancy is the result of a passionate filmmaker getting near-perfect performances from his well-chosen cast, of welding great music and attention-grabbing scenery to a modern tragedy that touches many emotions. The result is a five-star film.

People are surprised when I tell them the Sex Pistols rank among my all-time favorite groups. No, I was never a punk, and besides, when I was growing up `70's punk bands were mostly curiosities from modern pop culture history, but I do like the music the Sex Pistols produced on their one and only legitimate album, and the film Sid & Nancy, much criticized by pompous purists and much praised by most everyone else, is a chronicle of that era and two of its most infamously doomed participants. The chameleonic Gary Oldman brings Sid Vicious not only to life, he somehow surpasses the original to vicariously embody a character more memorable than the flesh and blood young man on whom the role is based. Likewise Chloe Webb (who really deserved better career choices than she got after this movie) brings the manic-depressive Nancy Spungen back from the grave in all her alienating, irritatingly pathetic hideousness.

Some say this movie takes liberties with the timeline of Sid and Nancy's short lives, and others say it manages to glamorize them for the wrong things. Probably legitimate gripes, I'll grant, but there are also those who refuse to see the greatness in, say, Shakespeare's Richard III, because the fictionalized villain bears scant resemblance to the real man. That's much the same case here. For all one might say in criticism of this movie, Alex Cox did the impossible and revived the decaying, culture-shocked world of 1970's London, and against that stage he crafted a story that works well. Sid & Nancy is about drugs, music, twisted love between two misfit human beings, needless death, and a revolutionary movement that imploded on its nihilism even as its message was lost on the masses. Sid & Nancy is not only about Sid and Nancy, so emblematic of their time and place, it is the tragic chronicle of the spirit of misguided post-adolescent reaction against a dismal age.