Film

Naked

Naked is Mike Leigh at his most corrosive: a mordantly funny, deeply uncomfortable night-and-day odyssey through early-90s London with David Thewlis's Johnny, a brilliant, cruel, unemployed man who talks like a prophet and treats women appallingly. There's no redemption arc, just class rage, dazzling misanthropic monologues and real wit tangled up with real ugliness. Watch it for the writing and Thewlis; brace for the misogyny.

TMDb rating7.3

If you liked this

Nil by Mouth1997

Gary Oldman's directorial debut is just as unflinching about British working-class male rage and domestic wreckage, with performances that feel less acted than survived.

But It's punishing rather than darkly funny — expect no wit to soften the violence, just raw, exhausting despair.

Nil by Mouth poster

Trainspotting1996

Same era, same British underclass energy, but recast as kinetic, drug-fuelled comedy — Renton's voiceover has some of Johnny's manic, self-justifying eloquence.

But It's flashier and more stylised than Leigh's grim realism, with music-video energy that can feel like a different genre entirely.

Trainspotting poster

Taxi Driver1976

Travis Bickle is Johnny's American cousin — another alienated man narrating his own decline while wandering a city at night, convinced everyone else is the problem.

But Scorsese's build toward violence is more classically dramatic; it lacks Leigh's improvisational looseness and pitch-black comic asides.

Taxi Driver poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Man Bites Dog1992

Both films ask you to spend hours with a magnetic, articulate man who is genuinely monstrous, daring you to keep watching and keep listening even as your sympathy curdles.

This Belgian mockumentary about a charming serial killer being filmed by his own documentary crew pushes Naked's queasy charisma-versus-cruelty question to its most extreme, pitch-black comic conclusion.

But It is far more violent and satirical than Leigh's film, and the mockumentary conceit is a deliberately colder kind of provocation.

Man Bites Dog poster
More like this (8)

Secrets & Lies1996no page yet

Mike Leigh's very next film has the same unmistakable ear for how people actually talk, but builds toward reconciliation rather than nihilism — a gentler companion piece.

But If you came to Leigh for Johnny's savagery, this film's warmth and eventual tenderness might feel like a bait and switch.

This Is England2007

Shane Meadows brings the same eye for Britain's discarded and disaffected, tracking a young man radicalised by boredom and rage in Thatcher's shadow.

But It's more plot-driven and political than Naked's wandering structure, with a clearer arc and villain than Leigh ever offers.

This Is England poster

Fish Tank2009

Andrea Arnold's camera follows a teenage girl through housing-estate Britain with the same unsentimental, handheld intimacy Leigh brings to Johnny's odyssey.

But The rage here is quieter and more inward; if you want Johnny's verbal fireworks, this is a much more withholding film.

Fish Tank poster

Sweet Sixteen2002no page yet

Ken Loach's study of a Scottish teenager scrambling for dignity shares Naked's refusal to flinch from poverty, and its belief that charm and self-destruction can coexist.

But Loach is more interested in systemic injustice than character psychology — less introspective monologue, more sociological tragedy.

Ratcatcher1999

Lynne Ramsay's debut finds beauty inside grinding deprivation, matching Naked's willingness to sit in ugliness without looking away or offering comfort.

But It's slower, more poetic and far less verbal — nobody here talks like Johnny does, and the mood is elegiac rather than caustic.

Ratcatcher poster

Nightcrawler2014

Jake Gyllenhaal's nocturnal LA predator shares Johnny's unsettling charisma and philosophy-of-one monologuing, dressed up as a slick modern thriller.

But It's a genre film with a plot engine and a moral arc — much more commercial and less interested in ambiguity than Leigh's film.

Nightcrawler poster

A Woman Under the Influence1974

Cassavetes pioneered the loose, improvisation-soaked, performance-first style Leigh works in — both trust long, uncomfortable scenes to reveal someone coming apart in real time.

Gena Rowlands gives a performance as raw and disorienting as Thewlis's, and this earlier American film essentially invented the naturalistic, unscripted-feeling style Leigh perfected two decades later.

But It's slower and more purely domestic — no wandering, no London night, just one house and one woman unravelling.

A Woman Under the Influence poster

Withnail & I1987

Both are portraits of brilliant, verbally dazzling men who weaponise eloquence as a defence against failure and unemployment — one played for dread, the other for tragicomic cult laughs.

If you loved Johnny's cruel, dazzling monologues, Withnail's drunken tirades are the funnier, more affectionate cousin — same wasted brilliance, softer landing.

But It's a cult comedy first and foremost; the misanthropy here is charming and quotable, not the queasy, dangerous thing Leigh is doing.

Withnail & I poster

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Recommended by

Withnail & I, Nil by Mouth, Billy Liar