As high as you go, you always come down in the end. You'd think that John Holmes, a veteran of some 1,000 hardcore skin-flicks, would have realised this better than anybody. Apparently not. So it was that once the blood had drained from his porn career, Holmes slid into a fug of bad drugs and sunken-eyed friends. Wonderland tells the story of his stickiest off-screen moment: his alleged involvement in a four-way gangland murder.

James Cox's dark thriller begins groggily, as if hungover. In fact, it isn't until the final third, after Holmes' testimony has begun to violently clash with those of his skanky girlfriend (Kate Bosworth) and Dylan McDermott's unhinged ex-con, that Wonderland finally manages to rouse itself into full erection. Once it does, it bolts you to your seat, dragging you through a thorough re-evaluation of everything you thought you knew about the crime and its major players.

It helps, of course, that Val Kilmer is playing Holmes. No stranger to fading limelight himself, Kilmer succeeds in capturing the two extremes of the man with the biggest `part' in modern cinema - both his inevitable egotism and his cripplingly low self-esteem. It's just a pity that Cox's screenplay isn't able to illuminate the murkier shades of his character; unlike the real John Holmes, Kilmer could rightly grumble that he hasn't enough to play with. Still, Wonderland remains an effective crime yarn, even if it does tend to poke rather than penetrate.

DVD Extras:

Cox provides a refreshingly honest commentary, taking time to respond individually to criticisms of the movie made on its theatrical release. Slightly less engaging are the seven deleted scenes which, with the exception of an inspired late-night rant on the nature of '70s TV show Fantasy Island, bring nothing you couldn't gladly live without.