Swagger of Thieves (R16, 106 mins) Directed by Julian Boshier ★★★★½

One of my favourite Head Like a Hole stories – it may even be true – is of the night in 1992 they supported The Red Hot Chili Peppers in Wellington and how the contract banned any members of Head Like a Hole from playing naked that night.

Presumably because the Peppers didn't want to be upstaged by any upstart locals.

Head Like a Hole singer Nigel "Booga" Beazley is one of two key figures in Swagger of Thieves.

If you were around Wellington in the early and mid-1990's you couldn't not be aware of the music thundering out of various dives in Cuba and Willis streets. Years before the user-friendly grooves of the Freddies and The Black Seeds defined "the Welly sound" (urrgh) the place was rock-pig central. And right at the heart of it, under the stewardship of manager Gerald Dwyer, were Shihad and Head Like a Hole.

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Years back, I was invited to write a proposal for a doco on Shihad. I duly did the research, reassembled some memories of a few gigs and nights, got to know the band better than I had and then put together a 30 page-or-so outline that became a blueprint for the film Shihad: The Beautiful Machine. I was briefly attached as director, but that was never going to work.

Swagger of Thieves is a savagely appropriate title for the Head Like a Hole story documentary by Julian Boshier.

I was always aware that there was another parallel film in the works. A film on Shihad's contemporaries and label-mates Head Like a Hole. Unlike ours, this one was an unfunded labour of love with only one maker to provide an uncompromised vision of what the film could eventually become. Over the years, director/writer Julian Boshier and me have been in contact a few times, but we have never met or even directly discussed the project.

And then, when I'd pretty much forgotten the Head Like a Hole doco had ever threatened to exist, a link to a screener appeared in my mailbox. With a request that could I take a look and maybe share some thoughts ahead of Swagger of Thieves debuting at the 2017 New Zealand International Film Festival? So I did.

Holy hell. I've seen Swagger of Thieves three times now. On a small screen, a big screen and now in a lightly re-cut version for general release. Boshier has reshaped a few of the narrative arcs, brought a couple of players into greater, deserved, prominence and incorporated more concert footage. But everything that astonished me about the film I first saw is intact and potent as ever.

Swagger of Thieves isn't so much a film about making music as being in a band, about seeing international success seeming genuinely possible and what the world looks like from an endless succession of vans, motel rooms and stages of all sizes.

Head Like a Hole were a spitting, flailing, unstoppable, knob-wobbling, indescribable beast of a thing you would never forget you had seen

But more than that, it's a film about addiction, death, theft and betrayal. About feuds and wounds that have never healed. About appalling behaviour, chances squandered and people used and discarded. The title is savagely appropriate.

At the heart of the story are Nigel "Booga" Beazley and Nigel Regan, the ever-collapsing binary stars who are the guts of any Head Like a Hole line-up. As Regan says – riffing on Mark E Smith – "as far as I'm concerned, if it's me Booga and your grandmother, it's Head Like a Hole".

The two Nigels are granted most of the oxygen here. Neither of them are in much mood for legacy polishing. Regan in particular is pretty blunt in admitting a lot of the band's money and potential went straight up his and Beazley's arms. That a couple of the band's classic line-up are still in no mood to forgive or forget is completely understandable. I wouldn't either.

Onstage nudity was one of the trademarks of Head Like a Hole.

Swagger of Thieves is a rock documentary unlike any I've seen. It appals, engrosses, entertains and – at its best – swings like a puppy up a rope.

It's about family (the only apparent hero of the film is Booga's wife Tamzin) lousy behaviour, some of the greatest riffs ever committed in anger and a succession of highs and lows that should – and have – destroyed the band many times over.

On their night Head Like a Hole were like no other band. They were a spitting, flailing, unstoppable, knob-wobbling, indescribable beast of a thing you would never forget you had seen. In its very best moments, Swagger of Thieves does them justice. It is a stunning achievement. Go see it.

Swagger of Thieves opens in select Kiwi cinemas from May 17.

 - Stuff