November 25, 2025 – The screen fades to black. A single, shimmering guitar note – that unmistakable, weeping sustain – pierces the silence like a comet’s tail across a midnight sky. David Gilmour’s voice, gravel-edged and eternal, murmurs: “Every outlaw’s got one last song left to play.” Cut to the man himself, 79 years young, silhouetted against the crashing waves of Portmeirion, Wales, his Fender Stratocaster slung low like a trusted six-shooter. The Netflix logo blooms in electric blue. And just like that, the world remembers: rock ‘n’ roll’s quiet gunslinger isn’t done drawing blood.

David Gilmour: The Last Outlaw, unveiled in a trailer that dropped at midnight PT during Netflix’s Tudum holiday sizzle, isn’t just a documentary. It’s a reckoning. A 105-minute odyssey directed by the reclusive Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna) that traces the Cambridge kid who traded zoology lectures for psychedelic symphonies, becoming the sonic architect of Pink Floyd’s interstellar empire. From the fog-shrouded stages of 1960s London to the Pompeii amphitheater’s ancient stones – where Gilmour returned in 2016 for a triumphant homecoming 48 years after the band’s iconic film – this film peels back the myth to reveal the man: a reluctant revolutionary haunted by the ghosts of genius lost, battles won, and a sound that bent time itself.

The trailer opens in grainy Super 8: a lanky 21-year-old Dave, all sideburns and side-eye, jamming in a dingy Cambridge flat with a teenage Syd Barrett. “We were just kids chasing echoes,” Gilmour narrates, his voice a warm scotch over ice. The footage – sourced from private family vaults and Barrett’s sister’s attic trove – captures the spark: two boys from Perse School, one destined for stardom’s abyss, the other its reluctant redeemer. Gilmour joined Pink Floyd in December 1967, not as savior, but as fifth wheel – a stopgap guitarist to cover for Syd’s unraveling, his LSD-fueled schizophrenia turning gigs into guessing games. “He’d stare at his hands like they belonged to someone else,” Gilmour recalls in the film, eyes distant. “I played so he wouldn’t have to.” By early 1968, Barrett was gone, and Gilmour – barely 22 – stepped into the void, co-lead on A Saucerful of Secrets, his bluesy bends injecting soul into the band’s cosmic drift.

What follows is a visual fever dream: never-before-seen Polaroids from Abbey Road sessions, where Gilmour’s improvisational sorcery birthed The Dark Side of the Moon‘s clock-tick heartbeat and Wish You Were Here’s weeping diamond. Intercut with 1973 live footage of “Money” – Gilmour’s solo a laser through the haze – are intimate confessions filmed in his Sussex barn studio, guitar in lap. “Syd was the poet; I was the painter,” he says, fingers tracing fretboard scars. “But loss? It teaches you the notes between the notes.” The doc doesn’t shy from the fractures: Barrett’s 2006 death, a quiet Cambridge funeral Gilmour attended alone; Richard Wright’s 2008 passing, the keyboardist whose harmonies anchored Floyd’s flight, prompting Gilmour’s tearful Q Awards dedication: “Rick was the glue. Without him, we’re just echoes.”

Struggle threads the narrative like a recurring riff. The trailer flashes to 1985’s acrimonious implosion: Roger Waters, Floyd’s tyrannical bassist-lyricist, declaring the band “a spent force” and quitting amid The Final Cut‘s Cold War gloom. Gilmour, who’d chafed under Waters’ iron script for years, refused to let the dream die. “I could’ve walked,” he admits, archival clips showing him salvaging gear from a trashed studio. “But Pink Floyd was my family – dysfunctional, but mine.” The reformation birthed A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987), a synth-soaked phoenix that grossed millions on tour but scarred souls. Legal wars ensued: Waters sued to block the name, settling only after Gilmour quipped, “It’s my band now – deal with it.” The Division Bell (1994) followed, Gilmour’s meditative masterpiece, its Division Bell a metaphor for the walls he’d help tear down. “Fame’s a cage,” he reflects. “We built the bars note by note.”

Beyond Floyd, the film spotlights Gilmour’s outlaw streak: solo flights like 1978’s self-titled debut, where Pete Townshend guests on a track that feels like Who’s Next meets Exile on Main St.; 1984’s About Face, co-written with early collaborator Bryan Ferry amid his own divorce from artist Ginger Gilmour (they split in ’91 after 16 years and four kids). Archival phone logs reveal his modeling gigs pre-Floyd – “I looked good in turtlenecks,” he deadpans – funding a 1967 Paris busk that left him penniless but unbreakable. Fast-forward to 1994: wedding vows to journalist Polly Samson, his muse for three decades, co-lyricist on On an Island (2006) and Rattle That Lock (2015). Their Sussex farm – complete with moat and horses – hosts tender scenes: Gilmour teaching daughter Romany chords, or strumming for grandkids under starlit skies. “Love’s the real solo,” he says, Polly’s voiceover layering in: “Dave’s an introvert with a supernova heart.”

Faith emerges as the film’s quiet core – not dogma, but a spiritual hum akin to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn‘s dawn chorus. Raised by a zoologist dad and film-editor mom in Grantchester Meadows (immortalized in Waters’ Ummagumma nod), Gilmour credits nature’s rhythms for his sustain: “The guitar weeps because the world does.” The trailer teases 2024’s Luck and Strange, his first solo in nine years, a lockdown lament with late drummer Nick Mason guesting on vibes. “At 78, you tally the costs,” Gilmour muses, footage of his 2016 Pompeii return – first rock show in a 2,000-year-old ruin – underscoring resilience. “Syd’s shadow, Roger’s wars, Rick’s silence… they echo. But music? It’s the outlaw’s prayer.”

Reactions crashed Netflix’s Tudum site within hours: 15 million trailer views by noon, #LastOutlawGilmour trending worldwide. Roger Waters, ever the contrarian, tweeted a cryptic “The bell tolls for thee” – feud fuel or olive branch? Nick Mason, Floyd’s steadfast drummer, called it “Dave’s truth, unamplified.” Fans, from boomers who wept to Comfortably Numb at Knebworth ’90 to Zoomers discovering Floyd via TikTok solos, flooded X: “Gilmour didn’t just play guitar; he played souls.” Critics hail Kapadia’s touch: Rolling Stone dubs it “a sonic Won’t Back Down, proving rock’s elders still howl.” The doc’s score – remixed Floyd outtakes with new Gilmour bends – alone warrants the sub.

David Gilmour: The Last Outlaw streams December 20, 2025 – timed for solstice shadows. It’s no hagiography; it’s a final ride: Gilmour, Strat in hand, facing the horizon where innovation meets infinity. As the trailer closes on that Portmeirion wave, his riff fading to reverb, one truth lingers: the man who soundtracked our lunacy knows the real dark side isn’t the moon. It’s the silence after the last chord. But for outlaws like Dave, there’s always one more song. And damn if it won’t echo forever.