HURLY BURLY

Directed by Anthony Drazan. Starring Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright Penn, Chazz Palmintieri, Anna Paquin, Meg Ryan

THIS ORIGINALLY started life as a mere play on the New York art circuit, but Hurly Burly's crackling dialogue and caustic observational sharpness meant it could hardly stay out of sight forever - genius always rises to the surface eventually. David Rabe's scabrously funny, razor-sharp comedy has graduated to the big screen entirely by virtue of its flawless script, and in the process managed to enlist an almighty ensemble cast of top-drawer talents whose names need no introduction.

Hurly Burly concerns the friendship between four extremely affluent Hollywood movers-and-shakers, who spend the film's duration spouting reams of entertaining coke-fuelled gobbledegook and slowly losing the plot. Nervy, super-intense casting director Eddie (Penn) shares a luxury Hollywood apartment with his smooth-tongued pal Mickey (Spacey) who is on the run from his wife and kids - the bulk of their time is devoted to devouring mountains of coke and engaging in profoundly misogynistic (but deeply hilarious) conversations.

They are frequently joined by friend and aspiring actor Phil (Palmintieri), a walking time-bomb with a dangerously short fuse, while their world is occasionally invaded by women, none of whom are exactly accorded a great deal of respect. Darlene (Wright-Penn) is a cool but unstable high-flier intermittently involved with Eddie and/or Mickey, Bonnie (Ryan) is a drug-ridden stripper in a permanent state of chemical befuddlement, and Donna (Paquin) is a jailbait teenage runaway entrusted to the care of Eddie and his pals, who are barely capable of looking after themselves.

The whole affair is acted with enormous relish by all parties - Spacey strikes the smug, superior note he hit to such good effect in LA Confidential, while Palmintieri lends the film an air of omnipresent threat which provides a peculiarly unnerving counterpoint to the joyously rapid-fire dialogue.

Penn steals the show completely, though, essaying the unforgettable Eddie with a mercurial magnificence. He's a self-destructive, self-pitying and self-obsessed egomaniac who slowly retreats into some gigantic black hole in his psyche over the film's two hours, the process accelerated by his conspicuously immoderate narcotic intake - and his disintegration makes for painful but compelling viewing, while the dynamics between the group are something to be savoured.

The harder the gang strive for connection, the more visibly their emotional isolation is demonstrated - and while the undercurrent is ultimately one of tragedy and dissolution, the characters are so deeply unsympathetic that you don't exactly weep for them on the way out. Sparkling from start to finish with dialogue to die for, Hurly Burly overcomes its stage origins in style and stands up as great cinema, full stop. An absolute must for connoisseurs of all things dark and twisted.