As the man behind such cult films as "Performance" and "Demon Seed", Scottish director Donald Cammell acquired a reputation for intense, troubling dramas that dealt in consistently fascinating themes.

Issues of sexuality, power and identity were prominent among them, and both played a significant role in his final film, "Wild Side". Set during one long night for its four characters, the story introduces them as a boorish gangster (Walken), his protégé (Heche), his chauffeur (Bauer) and his girlfriend (Chen).

None is exactly as they first appear, and each has a specific agenda to which they are working during the course of an increasingly fraught and intense evening, one that will change some lives and leave others ruined.

Cammell's problems with his production company, Nu Image, began as soon as he delivered his movie to them in 1996. Concerned that they had financed a dull art house film they re-cut it and spiced it up. Shortly afterwards Cammell committed suicide.

This version of the film has been painstakingly restored as close to the director's original vision as is possible, and what emerges from that wreckage is a thought-provoking drama less accomplished than his other work but no less intriguing.

It may not, in the end, be earth-shattering stuff but "Wild Side" is at least an original vision from a talented film-maker. More importantly it proves that some people hold that to be an important thing in an increasingly reductive and trivia obsessed industry.