Sad Vacation: The Last Days of Sid and Nancy

It's possible to be of two minds about this grisly, dark documentary. On one hand, filmmaker Danny Garcia effectively reconstructs the events some four decades earlier surrounding former Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious's relationship with doomed groupie Nancy Spungen. But regardless of one's feelings about the early years of the seminal British punk band and its revered if jinxed role in the movement, it's impossible not to see Vicious as a briefly iconic figure who had little to offer following the band's breakup. Sad Vacation gives viewers no reason to believe that there is anything particularly interesting in the story of Vicious's drug-addled and aggressive final days as he shared opiates and mutilation pacts with obnoxious, would-be starmaker Spungen. Garcia interviews others who were on the scene as the pair lost themselves in a black hole at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, leading to Spungen's murder in 1978 and Vicious's lethal drug overdose the following year. Yes, some of the old unbelievable conspiracy theories re-emerge about another possible killer, and there are minor details about Spungen's determination to merge her destiny with that of one or another rock star, as well as truly damning stories about Vicious being intimidating and brutal to innocent people. But none of the surviving Pistols participate in this film that offers little in the way of fresh insights. Optional. (T. Keogh)