Naked begins in a dark alley where a handheld camera moves quickly towards the protagonist as he’s raping a woman outside of a club. It’s almost as if Mike Leigh wanted to give his detractors an easy scene to remember while they spout off about the film’s nihilistic perspective and its presentation of asshole as martyr. It’s easy to see the film as hopeless and excessively rubbing our noses in the shite of the modern world, but as an urban journey into the heart of darkne\ss, it’s negativity becomes a bit more meaningful. Leigh’s vision of despair and disconnection extends to its grimy settings and thick cockney accents, delivered full of acerbic wit by his typically brilliant cast, especially David Thewlis, in what is perhaps the best performance of the 1990s. Thewlis's Johnny remains an enigma throughout, tirelessly berating every person who comes across his path, instantly deconstructing and mocking their persona but in dire need of their comfort and even the most remote form of human connection.

Leigh balances the drifter Johnny against the seeker, Jeremy. He's a bit of a caricature and seems somewhat forced into the film at first, but he essentially resembles everything Johnny hates about the world, yet part of what he himself has become. Where Johnny wanders aimlessly from situation to situation, Jeremy sets his sites on an individual and puts every ounce of energy into beating them into submission. Leigh's films usually focus on the banal routines and struggles of working class people, but with Naked, he is more interested in the monstrous effects of poverty, class struggle and alienation in the modern world. The film's swirling paranoia and pointless cruelty is not meant to be a microcosm of the world at large, but rather a powerful and frightening condemnation of the reigning sociopolitical environment that allow such conditions to remain widespread. In other words, Johnny's cruelty is merely representative of the cruelty enacted upon him on a much larger scale.