Cheap The Clash: Rude Boy - The Movie (DVD) (David Mingay, Jack Hazan) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Clash: Rude Boy - The Movie

London Falling
If there's any consolation to some of punk's inspirational touchstones like Pete Townshend, The Stooges, and The MC5 being usurped by the Year Zero brigade, it may lie in their spiritual and sonic influence on groups like The Clash, none of whose members have ever had much good to say about "Rude Boy," the part fiction/part documentary/part performance film, now finally available digitally over here in the U.S., in which they had little input until it came time to help Bill Price salvage the soundtrack. <
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>What passes for a plot revolves loosely around the hiring of Ray Gange, playing himself, as a roadie for the 1978 "Sort It Out" tour. Gange, whose life is frequently hazed by a heavy alcohol intake, apparently has nothing better to do between shifts at a porn shop than having sex in toilet stalls, waiting for his dole check to arrive in the post, and hanging out with the band and his vertically-challenged skinhead mate. Most of the dialogue would benefit from subtitles unless you're able to cut through the heavy Pom accents - made even more impenetrable by the effects of fermented malted grains - or translate "jack the lad," "down the nick," or "stroppy wankers." I haven't a clue. <
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>There's an undercurrent of social commentary at work here on the parts of directors David Mingay and Jack Hazan that I don't even have a prayer of trying to convey, having slept through political science, economics AND social studies in high school. Many of the exterior shots from in and around a pre-Thatcher London are perpetually shrouded in gray and depict skirmishes between police in riot gear, the National Front, and uh, the anti-National Front (see what I mean?), abandoned council flats tagged with racist graffiti, and a malaise which hangs over the proceedings like a funeral shroud. <
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>With The Clash's name appearing above the title, though, most won't come here for either a message or character development. Gange, on film and reportedly in real life, spirals downward, drowning in a sea of tipple and stumbling through several scenes so seedy that you're tempted to start shooting up. There's no doubt he has a knack, but I'm not sure if it's for acting or vomiting. <
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>Actually, that's entirely unfair. Admittedly no actor, Gange had the role presented to him by Mingay and his acceptance was based more on a chance to get close to his favorite band than any utopian vision of film stardom. The bonus interview footage reveals a bright, cerebral guy who saw his payment from the producers as a way out of the country, and his performance exudes such a natural and understated sense of scruffy charisma that it's easy to forget he's in character. Although barely conscious through most of the first two reels, it's hard to not to love Gange, in a drooling-floppy-eared-dog-that-perpetually-humps-your-leg-as-soon-as-you-get-in-the-door way. <
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>Any notions that the band many feel to be the best of its generation was living a life filled with limousines, five-star hotels, champagne and groupies on ice in the dressing room, and nights of glory under the bright lights are scotched early on as they stagger from one spartan accommodation to the next, crammed into small cars alongside their gear, road manager Johnny Green practically bartering his soul in exchange for replacement equipment and Joe Strummer acting as his own wardrobe manager (as if!), washing his Brigade Rossi t-shirt in a hotel sink. <
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>Since the camera crew wasn't cheek-by-jowl with the band 24 hours a day, they were asked to re-enact and/or improvise certain key scenes from which their legend has grown for the sake of substance and continuity, including the arrests of Paul Simonon and Topper Headon for pigeon sniping from atop their rehearsal space which formed the inspiration for "Guns on the Roof," and the Glasgow Apollo dogfight between bouncers and fans which landed Simonon and Strummer in the chokey. <
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>Despite revelations that "Rude Boy" may not have been filmed as close to "as it happened" as originally represented, there's plenty here to recommend it, such as (and you had to see this coming) the concert scenes, which are the picture of spontaneity, abandon, and chest-thumping bravado, The Clash lining `em up and knocking `em down with little or no regard for their or their crew's physical well being, wedged onto postage stamp-sized stages and in many instances, sharing them with their audience. For Strummer, the guitar was less a musical instrument than a stage prop, but Simonon, Headon, and Mick Jones show no compunction about wielding and rattling theirs like sabres. <
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>The BBC clips of "Clash City Rockers" and "Tommy Gun" are contemptuous and white hot, the band brazenly throwing down a gauntlet on enemy turf and stepping over it on their way out the door. The interviews of Hazan and Mingay shed a little light on just what the hell they were trying to accomplish with this project and Green still seems woozy, nay gobsmacked, by it all some 25 years later. He oughta write a book. Wait, he already did? Never mind. <
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>If you're looking for an ending that ties things up into a neat, tidy package, though, look away now because quite frankly, it doesn't exist, "Rude Boy" coming full stop with questions unanswered, conflicts unresolved, and anthems unwritten. <
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>Just like The Clash.

Find the UK version
Most of these reviews are spot on - terrible movie, great music. However, from the details here, it seems the US version has been short changed - the English version also had a 7-song set from a German 1977 concert/student documentary film. That alone was worth the purchase price.