SID & NANCY

 

 

Sid & Nancy is a "fictionalized" account of the real-life relationship between noted American "groupie" Nancy Spungen and her boyfriend British punk rocker Sid Vicious (of Sex Pistols fame). To say their "relationship"--which was heavily fueled by heroin--was tumultuous would be an understatement, as is evidenced by this film. Anyone who knows the story of Sid Vicious (played by Gary Oldman) and Nancy Spungen (played by Chloe Webb) knows their "relationship" ended with Nancy being murdered reportedly by Sid Vicious in their hotel room. And I say "reportedly" because some believe that Sid didn't murder Nancy (even though he initially "confessed" to committing the crime). The movie portrays Nancy's murder as more or less "accidental" when Sid plunges a knife into her stomach after a heated drug-induced argument and she begs him to kill her. Anyway, Oldman and Webb drew positive reviews for their pretty much spot-on portrayal of Sid & Nancy, which I feel is the primary reason to watch this flick even if punk rock isn't your cup of tea. One complaint I have about the movie is that, during one scene, Sid Vicious is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of the hammer & sickle from old communist Russia instead of the shirt with Hitler's swastika he was known to wear. The producers of the film reportedly had Gary wear this shirt instead of the swastika shirt because they felt it would be less offensive to viewers. Yeah, right, like Stalin wasn't every bit the murderous bastard Hitler was! A sidenote: Somebody who apparently had a BIG problem with this movie was Johnny Lydon who was Sex Pistols front-man the notorious Johnny Rotten who actually stated during an interview how he approached director Alex Cox and told him how he should be shot for how he portrayed his "friend" Sid Vicious in his film. Johnny even cried during his interview for the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth & The Fury while discussing how he couldn't "save" his friend Sid (which, anyone who is familiar at all with the former Johnny Rotten, knows how that's rather uncharacteristic of him). I also highly recommend reading the book And I Don't Want To Live This Life about the life of Nancy Spungen written by her mother Deborah. The book clearly shows that Nancy had "problems" LONG before she met and dated the notorious Sid Vicious (and I'm, of course, not saying that to be detrimental of Miss Spungen).