"I want a riot!" Joe Strummer passionately sings in the opening frames of Julien Temple's The Future is Unwritten, "a riot of my own!" Indeed he got one. As the frontman for seminal punk act The Clash, Strummer rose from street-level balladeer to international superstar inside of a decade.

The son of an English foreign service diplomat, Strummer spent an itinerant childhood that exposed him to a prodigious variety of world music—but when the Sex Pistols broke, he was instantly converted to punk. As songwriter for The Clash, he crafted direct, socially conscious songs about racism, unemployment, and government repression. It was a much-needed tonic for frustrated urban youth, but when Strummer found himself playing to stadiums, he grieved that his message was being lost amidst the hype. The band did not survive mega-stardom, and Strummer spent years trying to find himself again.

Temple's film is both tribute and cautionary tale, a kind of loving admonition to be careful what you wish for. Genuine punk values proved incompatible with the mainstream, and Strummer is presented as a man torn between his idealism and his intense longing for success. This conflict, however, has only served to amplify his reputation over time. Avid fans who appear in the film—from Bono to Johnny Depp— do not so much admire Strummer as revere him.