Entries in the Category "matt dillon"
Movie Reviews: Drug Addicts and Their Inspiring Stories edition
The story of Sid Vicious, chronically unstable bassist for the Sex Pistols, and Nancy, his girlfriend and/or wife (the movie was contradictory about whether they were actually married). Nancy introduces Sid to hard drugs (if the movie can be believed) and they both gradually implode until Sid accidentally-on purpose kills Nancy. It’s all a disturbing, unbelievable-but-true story.
Of course, as the page I linked above will attest, no one knows what really happened, including Sid himself, who was too incapacitated to remember (or too guilty to admit). The movie has to make a choice about the events leading up to Nancy’s death, and it actually presents, I think, a plausible one. The movie represents Nancy as becoming increasingly suicidal as Sid’s career flounders, their money runs out, and their lives become unmanageable. She asks Sid on several occasions to kill her; on one fateful night, barely in control of his own faculties, he stabs her once, in the stomach. The situation rid of all tension, both of them relieved, they fall asleep on the bed together. And then she bleeds to death, because they are both too out of their minds to realize that a stab wound needs to be attended to.
Basically, the death reinforces the idea that Sid and Nancy’s relationship was violent but committed, that their love for each other destroyed them in a way that’s sort of ironically touching. They are portrayed as being kind of a nicely-matched pair, honestly. There’s one scene where they’re holed up in his mom’s house and they’re talking about cartoons or something, the cartoons they watched when they were children, and they are flipping out laughing, and seem utterly in sync. In fact, I wish a few more movie romances would show a scene where the characters are joking and bantering, chattering about nothing, and not in that stupid, fake When Harry Met Sally way, in the way that couples actually do it.
Gary Oldman gives an incredible performance as Sid, the music is great, the London and New York locations are very cool. I liked it, but it should go without saying that those with weak stomachs or no appreciation for irony need not apply. Maybe I sugar-coated it in my own mind, because I will admit to flashing constantly back to the episode of The Simpsons which spoofs this movie, where Lisa plays Nancy to Nelson’s Sid and they derail his career with their addiction to candy.
First of all, this is officially the most drug-less drug movie I have ever seen.
The movie’s about a quartet of drug addicts who engage in highly choreographed heists of pharmacies and drugstores and hospitals. They are the Ocean’s 11 of junkies. What I want to know is, why are they so much more interested in robbing drugstores and pharmacies and hospitals than they are in taking the drugs? They get a huge haul and they can’t stop talking about their next theft long enough to actually smoke or inject (or whatever) what they’ve got. Compared to Sid and Nancy--compared to certain characters from behind-the-scenes-of-the-meth-industry opus Breaking Bad--God, it seemed like these characters were never actually stoned.
And then when Matt Dillon decides to go clean, all we see is a lot of shots of him looking out the damn window! I didn’t realize narcotics withdrawal was so pensive, so tedious. The guy got a job operating a drill press, for crying out loud. Pretty steady hand for a recovering junkie. The movie became quite philosophical at that point, too, in the most navel-gazing, junior high way possible. This life, this life; it’s all so meaningless. Life as a law-abiding citizen is such a soul-crushing bore and drugs are the only way to experience love or passion; what a painful choice.
Dumb.