Pistol

Pistol is a fun watch, rife with visual flourishes and emboldened by a strong cast on top of its otherwise by-the-book music biopic boilerplate.

Theirs is a portrait of a battering-ram phenomenon that was successfully designed to destroy, and whether one likes the Sex Pistols or not, Pistol captures their insurgency with exuberant personality, formal ingenuity, and raw power.

There’s loads of great music on the soundtrack that’s representative of the era (not just by The Sex Pistols) that’s matched by Boyle’s shooting style that embraces the period in an off-kilter, slightly chaotic manner.

Danny Boyle’s sensibilities come out in full force for this serrated slice of music history. The performances vary in strength — but the collective scrappy energy of the ensemble under the director’s guidance is undeniable.

This is Punk Rock 101, designed to widen the audience tent to include viewers whose knowledge of the Sex Pistols is relatively limited. For all the frantic pacing and visual flourishes, for all the rebellious chaos depicted here, “Pistol” is a downright respectable telling of the tale.

It was so engaging, at times, that my own critical brain was left behind in the excitement. If the visceral thrill wears off a little too quickly, and leaves you pondering the question of “what’s missing here?”, that doesn’t quite take away the initial achievement, the performances, and the sense that on some level, this show does justice to the bizarre, thrilling ascent of a band whose influence outstripped its talent by country miles.

Even with the occasionally eye-rolling moments of high minded hyperbole about what the Pistols means to its fans and the fate of England’s working class, it continues to compel with its rich period details, cheeky humor, and the music, which has lost none of its raw power after 45 years. No matter what it skims over or outright avoids, Pistol won’t leave any viewer feeling as though they’ve been cheated.

“Pistol” conjures an aesthetic — chaotic, jittery, improvised — that nicely matches its subject. It also includes a number of female characters generally far saner than their male counterparts.

Amid the chaos of the dance floor, the Sex Pistols yearn to obliterate themselves, each other and their listeners. Even if what’s around these moments doesn’t consistently work, “Pistol” nails the thrill of learning to disappear into sound.

Boyle’s full-throttle sensibilities wrestle against the moments of sentimentality and heavy-handed nods to the Sex Pistols’s most disreputable members. But Pistol is unapologetic and joyfully unabashed in its vulgarity, which makes a fitting tribute to a bunch of rabble-rousers who never shied away from making an impression.

While the series has kinks to work out, the prospect of another season (or more) detailing what the members did afterwards would be fascinating to watch and perhaps less cartoon-ish than aspects of Season One that have been documented ad nauseam.

A breezy watch. But Pistol is too busy admiring the youthful rebellion of the past to recognize that, in doing so, it’s become the very thing its subjects once sneered at: a safe, mainstream crowd-pleaser.

Although there is a certain karaoke quality to the re-created live performances — Boon is tasked with playing perhaps the most charismatic performer in punk rock, a fool’s errand, as a glimpse of the actual band attests — “Pistol” gets the energy of the music and the crowds, and the look of the kids and the venues, right.

The show’s portrayal of punk rock itself – filtered through the lens of Malcolm’s machinations and even, at times, the vanity of the kids in the band – feels more like an image than a spirit, an escape rather than a way of life. Pistol, unlike the music that inspired it, never grabs you by the throat.

Thanks to Boyle, the cliched nature of Pistol is disappointing but not crippling. Still, the show seems as overdone as the dinosaur bands the Pistols were rebelling against, with a story that moves at a leisurely pace for five hours. [May 2022, p.78]

What we get is another common souvenir, courtesy of a decently wailed version of a ditty we've heard before.

Watchable right to the end, thanks to its visual brio and some fine performances, Pistol ultimately feels like a retold tale of filth and fury, signifying next to nothing.

But while “Pistol” amply looks and sounds the part, it struggles with the lyrics. It aims to place the band within the larger context of an economically and culturally stagnant 1970s Britain, but at heart it’s a standard behind-the-music tragedy.

While most of the performances are solid, Boon’s Johnny Rotten alone is reason enough to watch. The dialogue can be clunky, as though lifted from a third-rate Pistols biography or ripped from any other on-screen fictionalization of a famous band’s formation. There’s too much starting of things better left suggested. ... Like too many docudramas, Pistol doesn’t seem to know what it’s trying to say, or why.

"Pistol's" most watchable episode is the last, covering the band's first and (effectively) only U.S. tour which crashed and burned after the 1978 concert at San Francisco's Winterland. But what comes before is the humdrum — a whole listless swath that spreads over scenes, characters, and episodes. Hardly anyone catches fire, including Johnny Rotten, although his spiked red hair does do a good impression of shooting flames.

Like the real Pistols, the show is transcendent for a brief time, a raucous coming together of blunt politics and brash style. But over the last four or five episodes, it becomes an obnoxious and repetitive regurgitation. Pistol is, however, ridiculously watchable and easily digestible. Unmistakably the sentimental work of the T2 Trainspotting filmmaker.

Chronicling the history of a band devoted to chaos and anarchy makes for a messy subject, which might explain why "Pistol" -- a six-part limited series about the rise of the Sex Pistols -- is such a dreary exercise. Director Danny Boyle meticulously replicates the period, but despite plenty of sex, drugs, rock and rage, this Hulu presentation feels more like a coffee-table book than a fully realized drama.

Whenever Boyle manages to tamp down the faux-provocative visual put-ons and let this group work as a group, that’s when “Pistol” gets closest to capturing the energy it’s striving for. ... For most of the rest of the show, “Pistol” tries too hard to make the case for a band that never really needed any help to make an impression.

Hyperactive filmmaking with non-stop edits and showy angles only calls attention to itself and away from the subject. The Pistols themselves get lost in all the chaotic artistic decisions and the show becomes more about the image of the band than the people, the message, or even the music.

It’s all very rudimental. The problem is, except for Boon, who plays Rotten with an almost alien-like intensity and comes alive when on stage, no-one is remotely believable as their characters.

There’s a lot of ambition in Pistol, a lot of provocateuring, but it doesn’t spark.