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Mathew Scott

Wonderland

Starring: Val Kilmer, Kate Bosworth, Carrie Fisher, Josh Lucas, Dylan McDermott

Director: James Cox

The film: A grubby film about a grubby guy, Wonderland promises plenty. The tale it is based on - the role porn superstar John Holmes did or did not play in a 1981 quadruple murder in the Hollywood Hills - and the sordid characters surrounding it should spell box office gold. The shame is that more does not come of it all.

Holmes was a legend in the porn game, but there is little mention of his career here. Instead we get its burnt-out fag end. He is a man in free-fall, a drug-addled hanger-on who is only tolerated as a novelty piece.

Director James Cox plays some pretty cool games - cutting from street maps and  headlines, straight into the action, swivelling his cameras furiously  - but what gets lost  is our interest.

The film is told in two sections - the version of events as told by career crim David Lind (played by Dylan McDermott) who avoided the carnage by chance, and Holmes' version, as told by Val Kilmer. It's a clever trick, but your patience is worn thin by clumsy dialogue and a stream of cliches. And by the end it gets nasty. Really nasty. You get up close and personal during the drug taking and the violence. And it manages to make both thoroughly uninteresting.

Kilmer (right) does his best, but the rest of the cast are little more than cartoons. If you want a more entertaining look at this seedy underbelly, try Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. It's far more entertaining and you won't feel the need for a good scrub down after watching it.

The extras: If you can take any more, there's a commentary track, the almost unwatchably graphic crime scene footage and some clips from Holmes' court case as seen on the Hollywood At Large - Court TV show.

The bonus disc is where the real action is. Here lurks Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes, Cass Paley's 1999 two-hour documentary on Holmes, which is more interesting than the main event.

These are the real players - ex-porn stars, directors, producers, vice-squad cops - and none of their stories quite match. Funny, that, for an industry peopled by liars, cheats and frauds.

The verdict: Strangely - for a story that has so much going for it, in a dramatic sense - Wonderland is a film that lacks any real depth. It's a watchable, stylised, but ultimately hollow experience.



Wonderland