Rude Boy

Jack Hazan and David Mingay’s Rude Boy is one of the great rock movies and an engrossing, richly detailed document of the changing United Kingdom as it exits the 1970s and enters the 1980s.

Merging documentary and fiction, the film follows roughneck Ray Gange as he drops his Soho sex-shop job to roadie for The Clash—the most fiery, revolutionary rock ’n’ roll band of the era, seen in this film at the dizzying peak of their considerable powers. Ray, a difficult, sometimes reactionary subject and a foil to the band’s idealism, plays observer to The Clash’s legendary 1978 Rock Against Racism concert in London's Victoria Park and their studio recording of Give ’Em Enough Rope. Set against a background of riots, racist and anti-racist demos, and police hostility towards Black British youth, this unforgettable, absorbing film portraits a UK on the brink of Thatcherism, and a moment when subcultural shock troops met those of a rising right wing in the streets.