Admirable film.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

As far back as the spring of 1977, Malcolm McLaren had been trying to get a film about the Sex Pistols off the ground. At that time, the punk craze which the Pistols had spearheaded was flourishing in the UK even as McLaren "managed" the band into a blind alley; by 1980, when this abomination of a film was finally released, the Pistols were no more and punk had splintered into a confusing variety of subgenres. What does "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" tell the viewer about the Sex Pistols and why they mattered? Sadly, not much. "That film was us preventing the whole thing from turning into a dreadful tragedy and turning it into a fantastic enigma," McLaren said years later in "England's Dreaming", Jon Savage's definitive tome on UK punk. "That's what we tried to do, to lie incredibly." In that regard they succeeded, but McLaren's statement was pure bullshit: he and director Julien Temple lied out of necessity. Vocalist John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) had left the band in early 1978, and budgetary constraints prevented the hiring of actors for anything more than a few minor roles, so McLaren *had* to take center stage. The end result was a long, disjointed rant (padded with live footage, interviews, animated sequences and painfully unfunny scenes intended as comic relief) about how causing the Pistols to self-destruct had been his master plan all along, and it's terrible. Only during a performance of the title song does it look as if anyone's having any fun. McLaren repeatedly insists that the music itself was meaningless, that he was interested only in attracting adolescent fans "who loved to dress up and mess up." Which begs the age-old question: was punk ever about music, or was it just a pose? That query will elicit a broad range of responses from the various participants in the movement. But ask guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook (who had formed the group before McLaren entered the picture, and for whom the Sex Pistols were a labor of love) and they'll tell you that the Pistols were a rock 'n' roll band, plain and simple. They're right. The gestures--the haircuts, the silly clothes, the pretensions of revolution--were empty. It's the music that endures.

calling this film a 'mockumentary' or fictional is an inaccurate description. sure Malcolm McLaren might be a first class(definitely first class though)A-hole, but much of what takes place here really did happen to the 'Pistols' during their exploits. also anyone lashing out at this film entirely misses the point. it's not a film applauding Malcolm McLaren, hardly, it's a very detached and humorous film art concocted by the clever and talented Julien Temple. anyone mindlessly trashing a Julien Temple film without taking into account the director's skill and reputation is being a little child-like. Julien Temple is a great film maker who shouldn't be so easily dismissed by a few jabbing remarks.don't be so naive. this isn't McLaren's film, it's Julien Temple's. anyone who thinks this is a film by McLaren has their information all wrong.if you are a real 'Sex Pistol' fan, how can you so easily dismiss the great music number with Sid Vicious singing his cover of "My Way"? didn't you know that Julien Temple directed that for this particular film? that music cover is an important footnote in the 'Pistols' history. how can you say you love the band or Sid and then just dismiss that like it was nothing.their are many great and hilarious moments in this film (most of them real) that are due to the skill of Julien Temple as a film maker. the scene where Sid "El KaBongs" a redneck with his guitar is a hilarious example of how the boundaries of real life and cartoon violence can become blurred. there are many other great music numbers and animation in this film, plus interesting little anecdotes like the story of Johnny being attacked by thugs.anyone telling you not to watch this and that it's not a great piece of 'Sex Pistol' history, has probably become disturbingly involved in the dispute between Lydon and McLaren on a personal level. to become involved with celebrities on that level is, well, MORONIC. you don't know them personally, even though it can feel like it. people should remain detached when enjoying celebrity culture. too much personal involvement makes you miss the message of things. like the fact that this is a Julien Temple film and not an endorsement of Malcolm McLaren.

At the risk of making you spend more money, I suggest that before you watch this movie, you should read John Lydon's autobiography, 'Rotten'. It gives a good account of that era and once you have read a bit into the history behind the film, it will mean a whole lot more. That doesn't mean to say that it ceases to be weird. The opening sequences are just about the strangest twenty minutes of film that I have ever seen. There are moments of brilliance though. Particularly Sid Vicious shoving a cake in some french prostitute's face is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I generally think that Sid Vicious was an idiot (well, he was) but in this film, he comes across as an almost like-able, possibly insane character. The film seems to have a storyline of sorts but it all becomes confused in a muddle of history, punk rock and random sex. Malcolm McLaren comes across as a self-centred egomaniac (as usual) and Steve Jones is interesting as the detective on his trail. The trip to Rio seems to confirm Lydon's doubts about the whole thing. It was just a gimmick and what IS the point in glorifying the deeds of a man who helped to steal what was basically working class money? The song was crap anyway. This is a bizarre film so approach with an open mind or you will switch off very quickly as I did first time round.

Not only is The Great Rock N Roll Swindle thoroughly inaccurate, but when it comes down to it, not much about it is interesting or even entertaining. Malcolm McLaren apparently squandered the majority of the Sex Pistols earnings on this waste of film, which makes it that much more obnoxious. The intention, from the beginning, was to create a monument to the "genius" of McLaren, who to this day takes full credit for creating punk music, creating the Sex Pistols, and at times even writing all the songs. Viewers follow McLaren to various settings, where he tells his story to his sidekick, a female dwarf, and simply takes credit for one thing after another. One particularly irritating scene has McLaren in an abandoned airplane hangar, waiting for a plane, being hounded by reporters and giving them their "big story". The most entertaining elements of the film are the animated short pieces, however, even these reek of McLaren's overbearing self-importance.Even as a farce, this film doesn't work. Little about it is entertaining, except for Steve Jones, who is surprisingly decent as a pseudo-detective type person. 20 years later, Julien Temple, who wrote and directed this film, also directed the Sex Pistols documentary "The Filth and the Fury". While that movie is much better and more interesting than "Swindle", it still is full of Temple's "artistic flourishes" that just don't work, like interviewing band members in shadow, as if they are some kind of crime witness trying to hide their identity. An interesting bit of trivia: Film critic Roger Ebert was one of the original scriptwriters for the movie "Who Killed Bambi?", which eventually became "Swindle".