Punk: Attitude

Starring: Henry Rollins, Poly Styrene, Legs MacNeil, Mary Hannon

Director: Don Letts

The film: There should be no doubting Don Letts' credentials in making an all-encompassing documentary about punk. He was DJ at the punk-friendly club Roxy, friends with the Clash and the Sex Pistols well before they broke into the mainstream, and briefly managed the Slits. He was the first to record punk bands on video (his Super 8 footage was collected and released as The Punk Rock Movie) and made 2001's Westway to the World, the definitive audio-visual primer to the Clash.

It is, perhaps, his innate knowledge of punk, however, that undermines Punk: Attitude. After all, how much would one be able to cram into 90 minutes - especially when the subject is a sprawling cultural and social phenomenon that spans more than three decades?

Punk: Attitude presents a wide array of heavyweights in the movement - nearly every band that shaped punk is represented in the documentary, apart from Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and John Lydon - and tales abound, such as New York Dolls' David Johansen recalling how he dismissed the Ramones, and fanzine founders Legs MacNeil and John Holmstrom describing how they crowned their publication (and the movement) Punk.

The starry cast of reminiscing musicians and auteurs (director Jim Jarmusch is here) and the inclusion of valuable archive footage may be heaven-sent for punk aficionados, but the talking heads and sporadic imagery of the concerts rarely venture beyond the anecdotes. Now punk is so entrenched in popular culture - even production-line groups such as McFly position themselves as punk - a commentary on the movement needed to probe deeper into not only what happened but why.