Jean-Michel Basquiat was a shooting star of New York's Eighties art scene, a 19-year-old black graffiti artist who shot to fame in 1981, hung out with Andy Warhol, dated Madonna and died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. Taking the art of the streets into the chichi galleries of New York's SoHo, he painted with anarchic energy and playful irony on walls, doors, furniture and, when the mood took him, canvases. Basquiat's fellow artist Julian Schnabel also cut a swaggering dash during the Eighties art boom, but as a debutant film director he tackles his subject's turbulent life with surprising timidity and conservatism. Still, Jeffrey Wright gives a charismatic performance as Basquiat and the film sparkles with offbeat cameos from the likes of Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman and David Bowie, who dons Andy Warhol's trademark sunglasses and silver wig and gives a good impersonation of the artist's deadpan, bland monotone.

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