Joe Strummer was a rarity: a popular musician who actually had something to say; a punk who wasn’t style over substance. Appropriately, then, Julien Temple takes the blueprint he applied to The Filth And The Fury (aligning the subject’s worldview to classic narratives) to document Strummer’s life and times.
While the various stages of his life are given appropriate weight, there’s no getting away from the fact that The Clash years are easily the most interesting, and the director’s penchant for refusing to name or put any of his interviewees in context can prove irritating, but this account of a magnetic talent nevertheless rips by.