Miloš Forman directs Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Edward Norton in this biography of the moonshine runner turned Hustler porn magnate and his battles against censorship.

As a drama this drags its feet in the last act (Norton’s excellent final speech to the Supreme Court notwithstanding) but in the main it crashes and barges through the life of a detestable man who finds himself fighting on the frontline for the freedoms of the permissive society. All this is thanks to Harrelson’s blistering central turn, managing to add a twinkle and much wit to a belligerently obnoxious predatory millionaire and yet smartly avoid mawkishness when Flynt’s unlikely stance ripples out into further and further personal tragedies. Ably supported by Norton, Love, Crispin Glover and his own brother (playing Flynt’s brother no less) it is an undeniably powerful and seductive movie even if you turn it off not entirely sure whether celebrating a pornographer’s lashing out at the people attacking his profit line was quite such admirable civil rights battle in reality. Luckily Forman’s skill at satire rides that slippery rail tightly and successfully.

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