DIRECTOR Anthony Drazan has pulled together a strong cast in this adaptation of David Rabe's award-winning off-Broadway play and, with Rabe's help, transformed it into a lively attack on Nineties men to rival Neil Labute's In the Company of Men.

Essentially it is a character-driven dissection showing how a group of buddy-buddy Californian LA men relate to the women in their lives.

At its heart is bundle-of-nerves Eddie (Sean Penn) a casting director who snorts cocaine like a vacuum cleaner. Eddie lives in a posh Hollywood apartment with the evasive but cynically divisive Mickey (Kevin Spacey, sporting an unusual dyed-blonde look). Also in this inner circle is insecure actor Phil (Chazz Palminteri) and wisecracking smoothie Artie (Garry Shandling).

On the other side of the fence there's Darlene (a cool Robin Wright Penn) who's seeing two of the aforementioned men, underage waif Donna (Anna Paquin), who is passed around the guys (until she realises she has a life of her own), and an exotic dancer Bonnie (Meg Ryan) who has a bad time of it with Phil.

This is a talkie piece, that almost grinds itself into the ground with its endless meanderings on society in the Nineties, but the actors give such convincing performances, that are you easily drawn in. Like In the Company of Men, the experience is chilling, but also rewarding as the true colours of Eddie, Mickey and Phil are revealed in the final reel.