Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwitten review

Reviews

May 18th 2007 By Total Film

The politicised “punk-rock warlord” of the title sure drew the short straw when he died in 2002 at a mere 50. In terms of posthumous documentary treatment, mind, he’s lucked-out. Glastonbury director and pop-flick veteran Julien Temple brings the same piss’n’vinegar punch to The Clash’s foremost firebrand that he brought to the Pistols in The Filth And The Fury. Drawing on archive chats with Strummer, interviewing his old mates around campfires and splashing the screen with a freeform flurry of images held together as if by a safety-pin, Temple renders Strummer’s Clash years vivid and doesn’t ignore his subsequent wilderness. Granted, there’s some fairly airy gush from John Cusack and Johnny Depp to wade through. Happily, though, Clash-men Topper Headon and Mick Jones compensate heartily with the honest-to-goodness inside juice.