Plot: Pistol is a six-episode limited series about a rock and roll revolution. The furious, raging storm at the center of this revolution are the Sex Pistols – and at the center of this series is Sex Pistols’ founding member and guitarist, Steve Jones. Jones’ hilarious, emotional and at times heart-breaking journey guides us through a kaleidoscopic telling of three of the most epic, chaotic and mucus-spattered years in the history of music. Based on Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, this is the story of a band of spotty, noisy, working-class kids with “no future,” who shook the boring, corrupt Establishment to its core, threatened to bring down the government and changed music and culture forever.
Review: With only one album to their credit, The Sex Pistols have created a level of iconography around themselves unrivaled by bands with multiple records. Almost fifty years later, the legacy of The Sex Pistols in film or television is eclipsed by the cult classic Sid & Nancy, a biopic skewed away from the band in favor of the salacious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. Now the entire story of the bands’ genesis and ascension to celebrity is told in Pistol, a six-part adaptation of Steve Jones’ memoir. Directed by Danny Boyle, Pistol is a series that wants to capture the look, feel, and stink of punk rock in the 1970s but instead feels like a by-the-numbers music biopic that lacks any true edge.
Pistol opens in the earliest days of the band when it was fronted by Steve Jones (Toby Wallace), a working-class teen who steals equipment from music venues and gets trashed with his friends. Despite their love of rock music, Jones and his band don’t have the look or skills of musicians but dream of becoming as big as David Bowie. Calling themselves The Swankers, Jones elicits the guidance of fashionistas Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley) and Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). McLaren agrees to manage Jones and his band and begins their development into The Sex Pistols. As the series progresses, Jones’ place as the band’s frontman gets pushed aside in favor of singer Johnny Rotten (Anson Boon). McLaren also enlists Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge) to give the band some extra edge as he encapsulates the look of the punk movement even if he cannot really play.
The primary issue with Pistol is the casting. Every one of the actors here does a fantastic job, they just don’t look like The Sex Pistols. By casting attractive performers, the series fails to really do the band justice. The supporting cast also outshines the main performers as well. Thomas Brodie-Sangster gives an inspired performance as Malcolm McLaren and would have justified a series focused entirely on him. Sydney Chandler gives a stellar performance as Chrissie Hynde, future lead singer of The Pretenders, and Maisie Williams is underused as model Pamela Rooke. Other standouts include Beth Dillon as Siouxsie Sioux, Zachary Goldman as Billy Idol, and Kai Alexander as Richard Branson.
Written by Craig Pearce, Baz Luhrmann’s co-writer on Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby and the upcoming Elvis, Pistol doesn’t feature any true grit or stakes in telling the story of a band that upended rules and expectations on their way to reinventing an entire genre of music. Look at any photo or video of the Sex Pistols and you see a group of less than attractive musicians who barely qualified as competent to play the instruments they held in their hands. Yet, there was magic in Johnny Rotten and his crew of anti-establishment punks. Watching Pistol, none of that comes through the screen despite the characters talking the talk. Craig Pearce’s dialogue sounds like what someone would think a rock star would sound like, nullifying anything close to intensity or originality in this story.
Danny Boyle’s direction could have used some of the visual touches he brought to Trainspotting to help make us feel the music tangibly. Boyle intersperses archival footage of London during the 1970s as well as grainy concert footage to accompany the various musical influences the characters discuss through each episode. At times, the added footage begins to wear out its welcome and feels like a crutch to lend the story more authenticity than it deserves. Boyle has become such an accomplished filmmaker since his early films that it makes Pistol often look too polished than it should. Botle, like his previous television effort Trust, knows the story he wants to tell and rather than serve as a balanced look at the band, this series is definitely skewed towards Steve Jones’ account, something which has caused legal battles over the right to use The Sex Pistols music in the series. Johnny Rotten has sued his bandmates and claims the series is disrespectful but the series has retained the rights to feature the songs.
While I would not consider Pistol disrespectful to the legacy of The Sex Pistols, it certainly is not nearly as authentic as Sid & Nancy was to the look, feel, and lifestyle of British Punk music. Pistol does have some intriguing moments but often comes across as a reenactment of events rather than a fully realized biopic. If you love the music of this era and have six hours to kill, you may find something to love in this series. But, instead of harnessing the energy of anarchy and intensity that The Sex Pistols represented, this series ends up more like a cover band. It looks a lot like the real thing, but we all know it isn’t.
Pistol premieres on May 31st on Hulu.