Shopping ** (1994, Sadie Frost, Jude Law, Sean Pertwee) – Classic Movie Review 5763

This dismayingly violent, nihilistic and empty 1994 contemporary British teen action thriller finds its debut writer-director Paul W S Anderson struggling desperately to control an over-heated vision of lawless gangs roving England’s grim and unpleasant land.

Anderson’s screenplay has an interesting and timely ‘crash and carry’ concept – rival bands stealing motors and crashing through shop windows to go ”shopping” (ram-raiding). However it is continually thumped into the ground with a blaring soundtrack of aggressive and arrogant music in Barrington Pheloung’s score.

Unfortunately also, there is hardly a decent line of dialogue and not a three-dimensional character in sight. So that, when cars aren’t crashing or racing about in neon-lit inner-city decay, the film collapses under the weight of its pretensions and the burden of its negligible story.

Nevertheless, the film does try to show the effects on people’s lives of the addictive live fast, die young way of life. It has plenty of energy, action, mayhem and impact, and it captures the zeitgeist, as a cool reflection of its times in the UK. It looks smart and snazzy as shot by photographer Tony Imi.

And, as a further recommendation, it has an exciting cast – led by the young and exciting Sadie Frost (as Jo) and Jude Law (as Billy in his film debut), and also including Sean Pertwee, Fraser James, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce, Marianne Faithfull and Lee Whitlock, with Eamonn Walker, Jason Isaacs, Daniel Newman, Ralph Ineson, Tilly Vosburgh and Melanie Hill.

It is strong material, with violence, mayhem, pervasive strong language and some drug content.

In 1994, Sadie Frost was married to Gary Kemp (7 May 1988 – 19 August 1997) and had one child) but she later divorced him and married Jude Law (2 September 1997), had three children together and divorced him on 29 October 2003.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5763

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