Overrated, unrealistic and dated.

Rating: 6/10 (31 March 2020)

I was really expecting to enjoy this film much more than I did; more than one friend has it in their top 5 of all time. However I feel like I am 20 years too late. While well acted, the direction is severely lacking and under educated .Each character arc is played out too quickly and we're expected to believe that a 6 month addiction to amphetamines is so severe, it leads to psychosis that only electric shock therapy can cure. One falls in to sex slavery after a few weeks without heroin, another loses an arm and the last is jailed, basically for being black. While addiction is a terrible thing, the main theme of the film seems to be massively under researched and over sensationalised.