Articulate, argumentative and influential: the Clash frontman Joe Strummer makes a rewarding subject for a documentary.

| Jun 21, 2023

An at times exciting, restless and absorbing film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 5, 2020

... effectively paints a three dimensional portrait of Strummer, unafraid to confront his philosophical contradictions, though neither dwelling on his flaws, and showing how by finding his humanity, he ultimately lived up to the ideals he espoused.

| Jan 24, 2018

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

Lively doc on the late Brit punk rocker guitarist for the Clash.

| Original Score: B | Oct 18, 2009

This offers Strummer fans unlimited access to the man behind the legend. Though it really is for fans - who should run and buy it.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 22, 2008

The big unanswerable question is: Do we wish Strummer would have listened to David Lee Roth's advice that "You don't have to take life so seriously, honey"?

| Original Score: B | Feb 3, 2008

Miracle of miracles, a valuable portrait of Strummer manages to emerge from the chaos, helped by the film's one consistent thread: tapes of a BBC World Service radio show he hosted in his final years.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 1, 2008

[Director Julien Temple] stops short of hagiography, while exhaustively positing Strummer as one of the most important cultural figures of the 20th century.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 1, 2008

Temple, who chronicled the Sex Pistols...offers the full, sometimes bloated, context of Strummer's life through the testimony of his many friends and collaborators.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 1, 2008

Temple gets at the heart of Strummer's character, at the unbridled joy that existed within his righteous anger, the satisfaction of knowing he was on the right side of history and hadn't had to sell any part of himself to get there.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 18, 2008

The film is the work of an admirer, but not an uncritical one.

| Jan 9, 2008

Temple's film is a fittingly conscientious and absorbing tribute to his complex, contradictory personality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 9, 2008

A beautiful, evocative collage composed of concert footage, photographs, interviews and film clips, as well as interviews with people who knew him, the film is a rigorously thorough biography and an impassioned accolade.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Temple has plenty of cinematic tricks and willing interview subjects.

| Jan 4, 2008

Compelling viewing, even for people who don't care a bit for the punk scene.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 4, 2008

One of the most compelling documentary portraits of a musician yet made.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Future is overlong and will best be enjoyed and understood by fans, but even newcomers will appreciate the essential drive of the man, who died of a sudden heart attack in 2002, and admire his ability to balance anger and ecstasy.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 14, 2007