‘SID & NANCY’ OFFERS TWO UNAPPEALING LOVERS

As Malcolm McClaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, once put it, Sid Vicious was a “fabulous disaster.” Punk rock’s first poster boy--and its most celebrated casualty--Vicious symbolized both punk’s giddy charisma and its squalid excesses. Out of school at 15, bass player for the Sex Pistols at 19, dead of a heroin overdose before he was 21, Sid Vicious was the dark star of the punk movement. Contemptuous of authority, self-destructive beyond belief and full of a scandalous charisma, Vicious was a perfect matinee idol for rock’s late-’70s blank generation.

Whether he’s a perfect hero for a movie is another matter entirely. But that’s exactly what gives such a jagged edge to “Sid & Nancy” (opening Friday at the Metro), a harrowing new film that unravels one of the most unappetizing love stories of the century. Directed by Alex Cox (who did the much-acclaimed “Repo Man”), “Sid & Nancy” replays the ghastly saga of Sid and Nancy Spungen, his ex-groupie girlfriend.

With its black humor, vile language and graphic depictions of drug use, “Sid and Nancy” is the kind of movie that perhaps only a crazed David Lynch (“Blue Velvet,”) fan could love. Many moviegoers may find themselves appalled by the film’s unappealing central characters or simply bored by their downward spiral into total squalor. But for viewers fascinated by punk’s buffoonish energy and its slashing, guerrilla warfare against pop culture, “Sid and Nancy” offers a compelling portrait of two pathetic souls who overdosed on pain and unhappiness.

Cox (and co-screenwriter Abbe Wool) give us the gory details right at the start. The film opens with Sid (Gary Oldman) accidentally knifing Nancy (Chloe Webb) to death in a quarrel, then moves back to the Sex Pistols’ early London glory days. Though Sid takes his cues from Johnny Rotten (when Rotten, played by Drew Schofield, pronounces something as “boring,” Sid immediately echoes the sentiment), Nancy is his true soul-sister. When Nancy, angered after being ripped off in a drug deal, scrapes her fingers along a wall, Sid offers sympathy by bashing his head into the bricks.

Though Cox briefly sketches the Pistols’ rise to stardom, the movie concentrates on this tangled love affair. After the band’s chaotic 1978 tour of the United States, the couple reunite, first in Paris, then in New York, where they sink deeper into squalor and drug addiction. It’s not a pretty sight, and it’s perhaps a sign of Cox’s own uneasy rapport with his characters that he refuses to moralize or offer any pop psychological platitudes about their junkie death-trip. There’s nothing remotely romantic about watching the couple hustling for drugs or shooting up into an addled stupor. You get the feeling that they’ve become far more “boring” than any of their original targets.

Cox is a gifted, if wayward storyteller, with an unerring eye for striking imagery. A lesser film maker might have laden this tale with a lot of dreary nonsense about punk as a symbol of British social disillusionment. Instead, Cox shows us a group of schoolgirls, each armed with a croquet mallet, scampering by a parked car, each one giving the expensive auto a healthy bash on the hood. You get the point right away--there’s “Anarchy in the U.K.” everywhere.

Cox never really gets a handle on how the Sex Pistols landed in the middle of this punk maelstrom. But the actors’ stellar performances make up for the occasional lags in the story line. Oldman could have easily played Sid as a cartoonish lout, but he gives us a much more unsettling view of his escapades, capturing Sid’s ambivalent yearning for glory and his crude, almost childlike innocence. Sid may be an absolute menace, but when he spots a crowd of street urchins walloping another kid, he instinctively breaks up the fight.

Webb is equally impressive as Nancy, lending compassion to what is otherwise a deeply unsympathetic character. With a voice as raucous as a Bronx cheer, Webb makes it clear that Nancy’s tough facade hides a broken heart. She’s also a comical mass of contradictions, happy to blow Sid’s last dime on a fancy hotel suite, but lecturing his band on the value of studio time.

If Sid had lived, it’s a good bet that he would have hated everything about this chilling, unsentimental portrait. And not because the film misses its mark. “Sid & Nancy” (rated-R for profanity and graphic drug scenes) shows us every scabrous moment in Sid Vicious’ life. Finally, it was life itself that Sid hated most.

‘SID & NANCY’ A Samuel Goldwyn presentation of a Zenith Production. Producer Eric Fellner. Director Alex Cox. Writers Cox and Abbe Wool. Camera Roger Deakins. Editor David Martin. Music the Pogues, Joe Strummer & Pray for Rain. Production Design Andrew McAlpine. Art Direction J. Rae Fox and Lynda Burbank. With Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman, Debbie Bishop, Tony London, Perry Benson and Ann Lambton.

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (Under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian.)