It starts with the usual concert movie clichés – roadies wheeling flight cases; time-lapse footage of the set being built; expectant fans baring tits and tattoos – but Mötley Crüe: The End is no ordinary film.
This is an extravagant document of the band’s last night of existence, and so the cuts come thick and fast and frantic to match the absurdly breathtaking show – and to disguise the one-dimensional nature of the band’s performance. Nimble-fingered guitarist Mick Mars aside, it’s so relentlessly plodding that the interviews, when they come, provide thankful relief.
Tour manager Tim Krieg explains that the four Crüe members have separate dressing rooms, travel apart and stay in different hotels. And you wonder if they can’t bear to be in the same room as each other why should we?
But as the show builds to its demented, fiery summit, and balloons drop and confetti clouds the air and streamers fly and pyro explodes like a million fourth of Julys and the Staples Center begins to look like a cross between the climax of the Republican Party Convention and the set of Mad Max: Fury Road, you can’t help but wish they’d go out for one final spectacular spin around the block.
