Sid and Nancy has some claim on being the finest British film of the 1980s.

They are more than zombies doing needlepoint on each other's veins. Both are brought to life in complex, deeply felt performances from two actors who have abandoned themselves to enormously demanding and difficult roles.

Every character is booked through to hell or purgatory. But we gasp at the inventiveness, ferocity and cuckoo anarchy with which these rockers prepared their route to destruction or damnation.

Sid and Nancy offers no insight into these people, or even into the punk-era Britain that created them.