This seminal 1980s movie launched a plethora of now distinguished careers, including those of director Stephen Frears and Daniel Day-Lewis. The latter shines in his first major role as the scabrous punk and friend to Gordon Warnecke's entrepreneurial Asian, who dreams of creating the most glittering laundrette in London. This marvellously played movie's undoubted importance lies in the way it takes the key characteristics of the Thatcherite decade - grafting in the free market, the desire for material acquisitions, the establishment of stability - and turns everything on its head with a merciful lack of polemic.

A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.