Rebel Dread movie review (2022) | Little White Lies

Rebel Dread

03 Mar 2022 / Released: 04 Mar 2022

Words by Marina Ashioti

Directed by William E Badgley

Starring Don Letts

Subway carriage interior with passengers seated and standing, including a person wearing sunglasses, vibrant clothing, and dreadlocks.
Subway carriage interior with passengers seated and standing, including a person wearing sunglasses, vibrant clothing, and dreadlocks.
3

Anticipation.

One of the most prominent talking heads in the UK’s music documentary circuit finally gets a doc of his own.

4

Enjoyment.

There’s an electrifying authenticity to Don Letts that sets him apart from his white collar punkster peers.

3

In Retrospect.

Though a bit rough around the edges, it’s an engaging profile that doesn’t shy away from scene politics.

William E Bad­g­ley trains his cam­era on cult fig­ure Don Letts, chron­i­cling the col­li­sion between the UK’s punk and reg­gae scenes.

Yet anoth­er unfor­tu­nate vic­tim of our cul­tur­al impasse, punk nowa­days is defined by a yearn­ing mired in rose-tint­ed ide­al­ism, inun­dat­ed with dis­tinct genre clas­si­fi­ca­tions and fleet­ing fash­ion trends. Among a crowd­ed mar­ket of ret­ro­spec­tives repack­aged for nos­tal­gia buffs, which deify your typ­i­cal white British punk bands, arrives an edi­fy­ing bio-doc demys­ti­fy­ing a cul­ture shak­er who turned a gen­er­a­tion of punks onto reggae.

Don Letts spent his sal­ad days work­ing at Chelsea’s anti-estab­lish­ment base­ment bou­tique Acme Attrac­tions before pick­ing up a Super 8 cam­era to doc­u­ment the UK’s bur­geon­ing punk and reg­gae scenes. He would go on to direct over 300 music videos for the likes of Bob Mar­ley, The Clash, The Slits and Elvis Costello.

Assem­bled from his own per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions, a trea­sure trove of archival footage and a cav­al­cade of talk­ing heads includ­ing Dad­dy G (Mas­sive Attack), John Lydon (Sex Pis­tols) and Jean­nette Lee (Rough Trade Records), Rebel Dread man­ages to imbue a rich coun­ter­cul­tur­al his­to­ry with some much-need­ed polit­i­cal nuance.

That said, a mild case of Wikipedia syn­drome is to be expect­ed from such bio-docs, but with five decades to plow through, direc­tor William E Bad­g­ley man­ages to skil­ful­ly com­pact the Rebel Dread’s polit­i­cal awak­en­ing and left­field cre­ative escapades into an insight­ful doc­u­ment of an inte­gral frag­ment in British pop history.

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