"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it," a young Dorian Gray is advised by his debauched corruptor Henry Wotton.

Well, director Oliver Parker has been tempted...to make a third Wilde adaptation following previous outings with An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.

This time he sticks fairly faithfully to the original novel with Prince Caspian star Ben Barnes playing the beautiful playboy who becomes lethally seduced by the prospect of eternal youth.

In an age of vacuous celebrity, Gray would slip seamlessly into the empty world of Cristal and unearned fame...and so Dorian feasts on the decadence of the Victorian demi-monde.

His guide is moral-lite aristocratic lecher Wotton - a man for whom only youth and beauty have significance - who leads him into the opium dens and bordellos of olde worlde London.

There he chances upon unsullied actress (as if) Rachel Hurd-Wood and is smitten by her innocence (it's certainly not her acting)...only to betray her, encouraged by Wotton as they harvest acres of willing female flesh.

Gray wants this to last forever...and so it does when he makes a Faustian pact which means he will remain youthful while his portrait - painted by his gay chum-about-town Basil (Chaplin) - ages unseen up in the attic.

Barnes ably conveys the hedonistic lifestyle of Gray - tupping both a mother and daughter within minutes of one another - and only comes unstuck when Oliver shunts the action from the Victorian to the Edwardian.

The inclusion of Wotton's free spirited young daughter (Hall) in the story (she did not exist in the novel) adds another moral dimension as Gray seemingly tires of this constant round of self-gratification.

The result is a perfectly serviceable slab of gothic horror which - even if it glosses over Wilde's philosophical subtexts - packs a considerable punch.

Tim Evans