Part of Michael J. Fox's strenuous but doomed attempt to break the nice guy mould, Jay McInerney's brilliantly bleak tale of '80s burn-out and ultimate redemption is nevertheless not the disastrous miscasting it was deemed at the time.
Yes, he is somewhat baby-faced and doesn't quite pull off the callous, NYC cokehead aspect of his role, but the character's increasing desperation as his life implodes around him is effectively portrayed. Notable also for a charismatically nasty Kiefer Sutherland as his "best friend", and for a quite appalling array of '80s hairdos and fashions that prove once and for all that it wasn't the '70s that style forgot.