Witnessing a filmmaker’s debut isn’t always a blueprint to predicting where their career is going to take them, but sometimes, sitting down to watch their first, embryonic feature gives you a taste of exactly what comes next. The second point is especially true of Paul W.S. Anderson, the director who first proved that video game movies didn’t have to be unwatchable dreck with Mortal Kombat, and who then spent the rest of his filmography disproving it with ungodly Resident Evil movies. However, between the genuinely cool highs of Event Horizon and the jaw-dropping lows of Pompeii and Alien Vs Predator, even Anderson had to start somewhere and a flick back to 1994 gives us Shopping, a movie that tried to do for ram raiding what The Wild One did for bikers and The Warriors did for punching people in the face. Bursting at the seams with a clutch of recognizable talent looking frighteningly young (this was Jude Law’s first ever starring role), Anderson attempted to put his spin on nihilistic youth exercising their right to self destructive behavior. However, a who’s who of upcoming, British talent and a concept tailor made to piss off the tabloids can’t stop Shopping from being a bit of a dated mess.
Meet Billy, a young man fresh out of jail despite the fact he barely looks like he’s twelve, and as he’s matched back into society, we’re introduced to a dystopian near future where people still play Chase HQ on the Game Gear. With walls caked in angry graffiti and an industrial skyline filled with chimneys and smoke, the naturally rebellious Billy wants nothing more than to hang out with his Irish girlfriend, Jo, and continue to build his rep as the best Shopper in the city.
“What’s Shopping?”, I hear you ask, well, Shopping is the cool name given to the act of stealing a car, joyriding around in it for a bit and then driving it directly into the nearest shop front and nicking whatever you can before the heavy handed police arrive. However, as dubious a talent as Billy has, he’s apparently good enough to stole the ire of local criminal Tommy who also is great at Shopping, but instead uses it to make money by stealing things people would actually want to buy.
As their rivalry builds, Billy comrades can’t help but notice that the amount of their peers who are dying in fatal car crashes is a little worrying, and while Jo admittedly gets a thrill from riding shotgun while her boo ploughs into yet another store, or outwits the police in a car chase, even she admits that this grim life can have no happy ending.
However, Billy is one of those ride or die kids who always feels like he has something to prove, even if no one else gives a single shit about it at all; so despite Jo’s protests, he insists on one last bout of Shopping that’ll prove once and for all that he’s the best there is at what he does – even if what he does is incredibly idiotic.
There’s a very real sense with Shopping, that the whole film was very much a “you had to be there” moment for the British film industry. Movies about violently disenfranchised youth usually feel like films that exist as a snapshot of young issues that still manage to resonate in the modern age. The Wild One, Rebel Without A Cause, A Clockwork Orange, Trainspotting and Human Traffic are all films that see frustrated teens and young adults frustrated with their lives and wanting to be heard, even if the ways they go about it are immensely different. However, one thing they all still have in common is that they have something to say about the times they were made in.
With this in mind, it’s tough to discern if Shopping has anything to say other than “the 90s were a bit shit, weren’t they” as it struggles to make its world and its lead even remotely appealing to anyone other than egocentric nihilists who have a curious, but ultimately useless talent. A splash of graffiti that yells “Fuck Everything” seems to be the extent of Anderson’s message which seemingly favors mindless and aimless breaking of the rules for no other reason than they are there. The thing is, maybe I watched this film way too old, but all I could ask myself as the film played out was exactly how hard can ram raiding actually be – I mean, don’t you just aim your car at the shop window and step on the glass. I mean, the planning certainly involves some work and skill is definitely needed to avoid the rozzers, but nothing really suggests that someone could be unnaturally gifted to perform the act only to swipe an overpriced kettle. There’s also a sense that maybe we’re following the wrong character because even though Sean Pertwee’s Tommy is a vicious gangster, at least he’s making a living from this bullshit, whereas Billy’s I-don’t-believe-in-anything worldview sees the dopey fucker just doing it for the empty thrill.
And it’s here where Anderson shows off that flaw that’s plagued him for his entire career – the fact that he rarely knows what the film he’s making is actually about. Surely if we are to understand Billy even a little, the film should make at least some part of his persona vaguely seductive, right? I mean even Goodfellas made you want to be a gangster right up until they stomped Billy Batts’ head into the bar floor.
Another thing that thwarts Shopping’s attempts to be anything other than puddle deep is that almost none of its young actors convince you that they’re anything other than actors trying to act tough. A shaggy-maned Sean Bean is ok in a glorified cameo as a mob boss and Pertwee makes a meal of alternately trying to make Tommy a cold-edged business man and a pop-eyed psycho. However, An offensively fatal Jude Law is so young and upsettingly smooth, I can’t decide whether he looks like a Jude Law-shaped mannequin or just a lost member of the Communards history has only recently uncovered. Similarly, Sadie Frost poses from under mirrored shades and Joan Jett hairstyle, but honks all of her dialogue in an unconvincing Irish accent that only covers up the fact that she’s probably still have struggled if using her own. Still, the cast looks pretty and Anderson proves that for all his flaws, he still has a decent visual eye for things and when the movie reaches its inevitable, “tragic” conclusion, you kind of get the overwhelming feeling that it’s no great loss.
Oh I don’t know – maybe the years have just turned me into an old fart who has forgot how idealistic the youth can be even for the most lost of causes, but when it comes to trying to glamorising something as defiantly unglamorous as ram raiding, Shopping runs up a bill too high to afford.
Keep the receipt, yeah?
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