Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger

As the creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight knows a thing or two about bickering brothers. But even the veteran show runner must have felt he’d met his match in Liam and Noel Gallagher, the gobby Cane and Abel of ’90s lad rock, as he set about finding an emotional thread for this barnstorming concert film of Oasis’s 2025 reunion tour. 

With the help of co-directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern (Meet Me in the Bathroom), amps turned up to about 111 and the endlessly quotable siblings on top form, he brings an unexpectedly touching story of forgiveness to a wall-of-sound concert doc that fans will lap up and even Oasis agnostics (like me) will be swept up in. It’s The Last Waltz with parkas, an unashamedly nostalgic time capsule to simpler days that finds the swaggering guitar heroes kinder, gentler and sounding as tight as ever. 

The opening is a montage-y as you’d expect. We’re back to the band’s swaggering 1990s rise and acrimonious fall. There’s old Noel referring to Liam as ‘a pain in the arse’ and 2025 Noel noting his total inability to forgive. ‘It’s not like I stabbed his cat,’ says Liam, shrugging off the dressing room set-to that finally finished the band off in 2009. Watching the pair and their band – including Oasis OG Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, the band’s answer to Ringo – practicing for the reunion tour, the first time they’ve allowed cameras into the rehearsal room, there’s a sense that it could all end in tears like Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back. ‘There is a man who truly does not give a fuck,’ says Noel as Liam swaggers in, rehearses and then swaggers out again with barely a ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. ‘It takes a lot of caring to not give a fuck,’ says Liam, confusingly.

How will it go, and will there be a film at the end of it? The tension is palpable. 

But a switch flicks when the pair nervously take to the stage in Cardiff for their first gig and launch into a raucous rendition of ‘Hello’. The intensity of the fans’ reaction takes them by surprise. That love seems to engender a new warmth between them. 

It’s The Last Waltz with parkas

The concert footage takes in 12 massive gigs across three continents. It’s captured by cinematographers of the calibre of Haris Zambarloukos, Lol Crawley and Suzie Lavelle, who keep finding new ways to capture teary, grinning faces, with help from George Cragg’s snappy editing.

At their early ’90s peak, Oasis had a swaggering masculinity that could be off-putting for anyone not in possession of a parka, Fred Perry gear and a thirst for lager. So it’s uplifting to see a sea of faces of all ages and nationalities. White blokes are still a major constituency, but that edgy, amped-up energy is replaced by something more celebratory, more joyful. Zoomers and millennials are there in force, weaned on ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’ and ‘Definitely Maybe’ and sharing what the lyrics mean to them in off-camera soundbites. 

Hearing Noel describe his brother as ‘delightful’ and watching them stroll on stage hand-in-hand is disarming too. A joint interview with the brothers proves that they’ve grown up and discovered real affection for each other, but they still have the ability to talk a funny and strangely relatable brand of shite. The filmmakers should have asked about the tour’s controversial dynamic ticket pricing, the elephant in the room here, but no one’s in mood to spoil the good vibes. Then again, there are far too many of those to spoil. 

Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Sep 9.