Certificate 15.

107 mins.

Drama/Romance.

Starring Max Irons, Sam Claflin, Holliday Grainger, Freddie Fox, Douglas Booth, Matthew Beard, Sam Reid, Olly Alexander, Jack Farthing, Jessica Brown Findlay

ALISTAIR Ryle (Sam Claflin) arrives at Oxford, hoping to emulate his older brother, a former president of the titular fraternity.

This hush-hush 10-strong dining club honours the memory of its libidinous 18th century founder by boozing to excess at an annual dinner, trashing the venue and paying for the damages out of their trust funds.

Given his lineage, Alistair is almost certain to catch the eye of Riot Club president James Leighton-Masters (Freddie Fox).

However, it is dashing classmate Miles Richards (Max Irons) from more humble stock, who steals Alistair’s thunder and arouses the homosexual yearnings of influential club member Hugo Fraser-Tyrwhitt (Sam Reid).

Alistair and Miles pass initiation and are inducted into the ranks.

The students head to a country pub run by Chris (Gordon Brown) and his daughter Rachel (Jessica Brown Findlay), who have no idea of the devastation about to be wrought.

The Riot Club is a sobering attack on a culture of inherited privilege and power in Britain.

The class war degenerates into foul-mouthed tirades and stomach-churning violence in Laura Wade’s robust adaptation of her own coruscating theatre production.

Lone Scherfig’s film packs a similar emotional wallop to its stage-bound predecessor, dissecting how our egalitarian society is founded on secret handshakes in wood-panelled rooms far from the madding electorate.

You can almost see the venom streaking down the camera lens when one inebriated club member sneers, “I am sick to death of poor people!”

Performances are uniformly excellent.

The Riot Club is not a party most of us would wish to attend. But that’s the point.