Sid and Nancy

By Maddalena Dottori
12/08/2009

Alex Cox's portrayal of the the infamously tragic love story between Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Splugen continues to divide critics and public alike since its release over 20 years ago. Some dismissed it as being vacuous and historically inaccurate, while others hailed it as an intense and believable tale of punk rock and heroin addiction. I understand and respect both opinions, as, in my view, the film has equal merits and faults. That's not the case with Johnny Rotten Lydon - played in the movie by Andrew Schofield- who fiercely critiqued the movie as being “the lowest form of life.” He said in his 1994 autobiography: “I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction...That's such a nonsense...The squalid New York hotel scenes were fine, except they needed to be even more squalid. All of the scenes in London with the Pistols were nonsense. None bore any sense of reality.”
Sid And Nancy (1986) opens in a New York police interrogation room, shortly after Sid (Gary Oldman) has stabbed Nancy (Chloe Webb) to death. The cops ask Sid how they met. As the Pistols' bass player start to talk, we flashback to London a year or so earlier. Sid has just joined the Sex Pistols, the cultural and music phenomenon of the moment, playing sold-out gigs under the management of impresario Malcolm McLaren. Nancy is an American heroin addict who's just come to London to check 'if the Sex Pistols are shit like people say.'
It's a matter of time before they meet, fall in love and start a 'glorious' career as professional full-time junkies, while the Pistols acrimoniously split during their first and only American tour and Vicious unsuccessfully attempts to start a solo career.
How their story ends we all know, with both of them dead, both presumably by Vicious' hand.
Gary Oldman is sensational and totally believable as the strung out Vicious (even Rotten acknowledged it), while Chloe Webb's Nancy is so annoying that you can scarcely believe it. In fact I'm sure Courtney Love - who was instead cast to play Nancy's friend Gretchen - would  have done a much better job as Sid's girlfriend.