The Filth & the Fury

For about an hour, the Sex Pistols new self-indulgent, slash-and-burn documentary is a fascinating patchwork of interviews, lost concert footage, 90-mile-per-hour biographical data and body slams directed at record companies and managers (okay, Malcolm McLaren) who the band feels screwed them during their 18-month existence. But once the rare clips and Johnny Rotten's gritty, grinning anecdotes run out, it becomes a repetitive, excessive and bitter rant. Essentially an update of 1980's The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, but from the band's point of view, this isn't much more than a vanity piece in which the Pistols take pride in their scabs. Not a necessary purchase. (R. Blackwelder)