Highly-intimate, deeply personal, brilliant documentary captures the pain and glory of Ozzy Osbourne’s journey to get back onstage to say goodbye.
A while back now, Sharon Osbourne told Kerrang! how No Escape From Now was meant to end. Having followed Ozzy closely for literally years, as he navigates retirement and recovery following the health issues that made him cancel his farewell tour in 2019, and making his final album, Patient Number 9, the film’s finale was to be the very moment The Prince Of Darkness returned to the stage at Back To The Beginning. Not his actual performance, but just that brilliant moment when Villa Park first sees him, welcomes him back where he belongs one last time.
Tragically, we all know how things actually finished. But let not the big man’s death overshadow that this is a film about life, in all its highs and lows. Directed by the award-winning Tania Alexander, and produced by Sharon and K! legend Phil Alexander, it is a brilliant, powerful, intimate portrait of Ozzy as both a rock icon, and simply a man – a husband, a father, a grandad – making his way through the most difficult of times.
You will cry. You will cry, and you will laugh. You’ll feel fondness and love and excitement. You’ll occasionally be shocked, and then you’ll marvel at the depth and superhuman abilities of a human being. Then you’ll cry again, probably at the most surprising of things.
The moments where the extent of the problems with Ozzy’s health and the mistakes made in trying to fix them are laid out are unflinching but necessary. Understanding quite how hard his neck surgery issues (which left him, in Kelly’s words, “Like fucking Gollum”) and Parkinson’s made day to day life, with pain a near constant feature, is heartbreaking. You won’t be prepared for the scenes showing him weakened by and completely fed up with his predicament. Nor to see Sharon, the bombastic, unstoppable woman who never faced an opponent too big to fight against with everything she’s got, so broken down.
Where the joy that there is in this film lies is in what it captures as it follows Ozzy around. Making Patient Number 9 with his mates Andrew Watt (a man with an endearing ability to get Ozzy mucking about and who looks like every Backstreet Boy at once), RHCP drummer Chad Smith and Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo (also a veteran of Ozzy’s own band) you see the light come back in his eyes. Similarly, during prep for his turn at the Commonwealth Games with Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi, a stunned Sharon notes that not only has her husband’s demeanour completely changed to how he used to be in preparing for a gig, he’s just walked from stage to car without his stick.
Even more stirring are the rehearsals for his induction into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, itself touch and go as to whether doctors say Ozzy can travel there. Being unable to perform himself, his friends Billy Idol, Maynard James Keenan and Jelly Roll take the vocals on a trio of bangers, backed by Andrew Watt, Wolfgang Van Halen, Rob, Chad and Zakk Wylde, as Ozzy looks on from a throne. With no spoiler, it’s a genuinely wonderful thing that the cameras were there to record what happened. It’s also the only time award host Jack Black has ever been lost for words.
That’s the other big part here: the love for Oz. Inside the Osbourne homestead, Sharon and his children Kelly, Jack and Aimee all talk about him with deep affection, and the fly-on-the-wall stuff of him playing with his grandchildren and giving nuggets of wisdom to his own kids on being parents will make you smile. The interviews with his musical peers on the ground at Back To The Beginning, meanwhile – Slash, Duff McKagan, a moist-eyed James Hetfield – not only underline the man’s influence, but why they’re all going so far out of their way to help him make his farewell as unbeatable as it was. Again, you’re not ready for Billy Corgan’s turn.
It’s at times a tough watch, but also a cathartic one. It’s upsetting, but so much more of it shows Ozzy at his best, even in the worst of times: the sweet, deep love between him and his wife and family; “the little Ozzy guy inside me” keeping him stubbornly looking toward one last gig; the way getting to do music really does lift him from places of complete dejection; how he simply cannot help donging around and being Ozzy and pulling daft faces and making stupid jokes.
No Escape From Now could have been coming out in much more fun circumstances – a cherry on top of his triumphant climb up life’s tallest mountain to go out properly, on his terms, fulfilled. Even with the sad new ending, though, much of it still has that feeling. And it’s hard to think of a finer tribute than that.
Verdict: 5/5
Ozzy: No Escape From Now is out now via Paramount+
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