Review of The Filth and the Fury (2000) by Seth M — 15 Aug 2016

I found this film a bit disappointing. The Sex Pistols are awesome and all, but this documentary is too scatterbrained. Great pains is gone through to show that times were turbulent and people were pissed, then doesn't really link that to the success of the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten himself seems to believe that he changed all of Britain with his music, but nothing was really done in this movie to show that. All that was shown was that there were lots of people who didn't like the Sex Pistols.

Also, while the story could have been compelling, there was too much going on on-screen that detracted from what was being said. Random clips of Richard the III that only link to one thing that Rotten says, but are shown profusely throughout the whole movie. At one point Rotten says "like a monkey at a tea party" and sure enough, two seconds later monkeys are shown at a tea party, as if we wouldn't understand the statement otherwise. Also, for some reason the new interviews had the interviewee's faces blacked out, detracting from the emotion for no good reason. While the scene where Rotten cries over the death of Sid Vicious was emotional, it could have been much more emotional if we could have seen his face.

I wish that the interviews and historical footage could have spoken for themselves without the massive amounts of quick cuts and random crap going on detracting from it.