Sex Pistols - The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle Details

The rise and fall of the Sex Pistols is charted in director Julien Temple's docu-fiction account of the punk era in all its anarchic glory. Using backstage interviews, concert clips, newsreels, staged sequences and animation footage from their aborted vehicle Who Killed Bambi? (which “King Leer” Russ Meyer was set to direct), a fascinating and remarkably honest slice of rock history emerges from the swirling mass of material. All the relevant bases are touched on including God Save the Queen, the jaunt to Rio to visit Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, Nancy Spungen's manslaughter and Sid Vicious's death, with manager guru Malcolm McLaren shown as the ultimate manipulator of the masses and, on the evidence here, fully earning the title “King Con”. Every one of the major Pistols hits is performed, even Sid's hilarious My Way, in a riveting exposé of the music business and the whole punk phenomenon.