Despite the downward spiral of these two lives, the film never loses its drive or passion; it never wallows in the misery.
Sid & Nancy (1986)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:30
Fresh:27
Rotten:3
Average Rating:7.2/10
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Alex Cox's riveting biopic tells the bleak, heroin-drenched story of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his disturbed American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Gary Oldman delivers a bravura performance... Alex Cox's riveting biopic tells the bleak, heroin-drenched story of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his disturbed American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Gary Oldman delivers a bravura performance as Sid, matched by Chloe Webb's grating, clearly unhinged Nancy. The two lovers' childlike tenderness with each other contrasts sharply with their bleak, violent nihilism, and while the script implies that Nancy's death was accidental, the line between intention and accident is deliberately blurred. By turns romantic and horrific, SID & NANCY is often grueling to watch, but always compelling. This followup to Cox's cult hit REPO MAN was another critical success, showing that the director was as comfortable with reality-based material as with the satirical fantasy of his first feature. His romantic vision draws us in while throwing us back in time to London and New York at the inception of the drug-laden British punk era. The film's dreamlike style and a hypnotic score dramatize the schism between Sid and Nancy's world and the world around them--and the inevitable horror when those worlds collide. [More]
Starring: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman
Starring: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman, Courtney Love, Sy Richardson, Circle Jerks
Director: Alex Cox
Director: Alex Cox
Screenwriter: Alex Cox, Abbe Wool
Producer: Eric Fellner
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Reviews for Sid & Nancy
The only thing that is sustained in Sid and Nancy is a tone of clinical disinterest that leaves you asking why Cox would want to make a movie about them.
A haunting love story about a mutually self-destructive and harrowing pair.
[Cox] and his actors pull off the neat trick of creating a movie full of noise and fury, and telling a meticulous story right in the middle of it.
A few too many moralistic foreshadowings, but most of the time Cox's situations and characters develop on their own eloquently entropic terms.
Though dark and harrowing, explicit and unsparing, the movie proves a riveting biography of these burnt-out icons and their iconoclastic half-decade.
The title characters lead pointless, useless lives that are cut mercifully short by early deaths.
It's not every film maker who credits special thanks to both Luis Bunuel and Dee Dee Ramone, but then Mr. Cox doesn't fit any recognizable mold.
Cox's film is strong on the atmosphere of the day and the sordid lives of those involved.
...the movie takes us on a rocky, sometimes funny, sometimes annoying, often heartbreaking ride.
Captures the rhythms of heroin casualty much more effectively than frantic work like Requiem for a Dream, with considerably less bombast.
The inevitable deaths of Sid and Nancy are the only logical conclusions to their behavior; ironically, this is a fact they realize themselves.
The performances of Oldman and Webb, both stage-trained veterans, are simply astonishing.
Why then should anyone of sane disposition wish to see the film? Because it is still a love story, and a very touching one at that.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 66% 66% | Public Enemies |
| 83% 83% | Harry Potter and the H… |
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| 75% 75% | Julie & Julia |
| 32% 32% | Terminator Salvation |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 78% 78% | The Hangover |
| 49% 49% | Taking Woodstock |
| 26% 26% | The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard |
| 47% 47% | The Girl From Monaco |
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