Taking her cue from a best-selling collection of short stories, a scorching journey through 70s drug culture once described as "a 50,000 volt kick to the head", second-time director Alison Maclean (her first film was "Crush") tells the tale of a well-meaning fool (Billy Crudup) who is sucked into the world of drugs by a manipulative, more experienced girlfriend (Samantha Morton), only to emerge on the other side with his decency intact. He certainly embodies both the desperation and comedy of the addict. On the way, through a fair few memorable scenes, we see him scoffing breakfast cereal while she shoots up, stealing the wiring from a house with an equally feckless fellow thief and shaving Dennis Hopper in a rehabilitation ward, with Hopper proudly sporting bullet holes in both cheeks.
Crudup - one of those actors who really sinks himself into a role - excels at communicating every small shift in his behaviour, and Maclean's camera is constantly prowling around his face to capture this. This is both good, in that it thickens up the material, and bad, in that many scenes need to be brought more snappily to a conclusion. Often rambling, occasionally hypnotic.