Shopping

1996 "No one leaves without paying..."
5.4| 1h45m| R| en| More Info
Released: 09 February 1996 Released
Producted By: Film4 Productions
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

A dark, hip, urban story of a barren and anonymous city where the underclass' sport of choice is ram-raiding. An exciting game in which stolen cars are driven through shop windows to aid large-scale looting before the police arrive. For Tommy, it's a business, but for Billy and Jo, it's a labour of love. As the competition between Tommy and Billy grows more fierce, the stakes become higher and the "shopping" trips increasingly risky.

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Reviews

Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen
Supelice Dreadfully Boring
Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
dee.reid 1994's "Shopping" (stylized as "$hopping") is a movie that I first came across during the late-night cable hours as an impressionable 10- or 11-year-old growing up in the mid-1990s. Of course, due to the fact that I was such an impressionable young child growing up at that time, my parents were keen to keep me away from "Shopping," a film with a futuristic, industrial-heavy aesthetic that appeared to glamorized auto theft, ram-raiding and unsavory, Adrenalin-addicted thrill-seeking young car thieves. (And not so surprisingly, this helped the film to generate a controversy in the United Kingdom for supposedly glamorizing criminal, anti-social behavior.)"Shopping" is mostly remembered for being a noteworthy early film credit for its two leads, as well as being the directorial debut of a then-29-year Brit named Paul Anderson (who now goes by "Paul W.S. Anderson" to avoid confusion with American filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson). Paul Anderson would later gain worldwide recognition just one year later for his American film debut, "Mortal Kombat" (1995), which is a film I love to death and to this day I still consider it to be the greatest film adaptation of a video game."Shopping" is a stylish, yet promising debut for Anderson, whose career has since been a wildly mixed bag of occasional high points ("Mortal Kombat," "Event Horizon," "Resident Evil") and several missteps ("Soldier," "AVP: Alien vs. Predator," and every "Resident Evil" sequel he's directed, pretty much)."Shopping" nonetheless showcases what would later become Anderson trademarks: excellent set design and cinematography, fast-paced direction, and a wall-to-wall soundtrack with an industrial/techno vibe to it (Orbital's "Halycon + On + On," which is featured in the film several times, appears to be a personal favorite of Anderson's, since the song was also played near the end of his later "Mortal Kombat"). "Shopping" is set sometime in the not-too-distant future in London, and centers around the so-called "sport" of "shopping" - stealing high-priced cars and then ramming them through department store windows, looting them, and then evading the police.Billy (Jude Law) is probably the most notorious of these young, early 20-something ram-raiding punks. He, along with his casual love interest, the video game-loving Jo (Sadie Frost, Law's future real-life wife), hit the streets (and stores) after he gets released from prison at the beginning of the film after doing three months for auto theft. Although it doesn't take long for Billy to fall back into old habits once released, his "shopping sprees" are becoming more and more ambitious, and reckless, as his targets become bigger and bigger. As the stakes rise and his notoriety grows, it catches the attention of his old rival Tommy (Sean Pertwee, an Anderson regular), for whom the sport of "shopping" is a business, since Tommy makes money selling off the goods he steals. For Billy, it's nothing more than an Adrenalin rush that he claims is better than any drug and is to a degree (for him, at least), an art-form. So it inevitably sets the two of them down a path toward a head-on collision."Shopping" is a stylish and ambitious debut feature from Paul Anderson that established many of his trademarks - most notably his love for industrial music, and this film revels in its striking industrial ambiance - but also shows his weaknesses, namely weak characterization, spotty writing and story. His non-written directorial works ("Mortal Kombat," "Event Horizon," and even the hokey "Soldier") were better showcases for Anderon's strengths as a director because he didn't have screen-writing credits attached to these pictures, but instead worked because of his stylish, fast-paced direction. Here, Jude Law and Sadie Frost give stellar and enthusiastic performances in roles for which they were young and relatively unknown to American audiences (at the time), and have since become more widely known.Watching "Shopping" for the first time since I was a child, it's an impressive debut from Paul W.S. Anderson, in spite of his flaws (which are many), and is something that can happen with any early effort from any director.6/10
FlashCallahan Billy and Jo get their kicks from their special type of window shopping. These professional criminals are not in it for the money, but for the fun of it. When Billy gets released from prison, his rival Tommy has taken over the street. A fight for power commences as Billy starts his own gang and hits a shop the day before Tommy had planned to. Tommy makes a move on Billy's girlfriend Jo, who wants Billy to change his lifestyle and move away, instead of fighting Tommy, a fight which will hurt them both. He agrees, but he wants to hit the shopping mall on a final hit. That has never been done before, so it will make him a hero among the others.....It's Andersons first movie, Laws first big screen lead, and to be fair it's really good, even though it's full of flaws and awful dialogue.It can be viewed in two,different ways. On one hand its a very dated 90s urban drama. On the other hand, you can see it as a futuristic urban punk style movie, thanks to the soundtrack and the opening.Pryce gives the film a little gravitas, but he looks mightily bored, and Pertwee hams it up as the main villain. Law is good, as is Frost, but it's clear she wasn't employed for her acting skills.Round the film off with cameos from Bean and Jason Issacs (hello), shopping is one of those rare hard to find Movies that has garnered a cult following.Which means that most hate the film, but the view whole me it, can't explain why.
Major Tom Shopping is set in a shabby, dark, crumbling post-industrial UK city in the early 90s. Blast furnaces and abandoned factories line the roads, battered old Ford Escorts, Sierras, Capris and early 90s BMWs are everywhere. The plot centres around a grim inner city estate of dilapidated tower blocks and deals with the aspirations of some of its residents.Jude Law plays self-destructive Billy McKenzie, a 19 year old nihilistic man who despises his society and hates his life. His older girlfriend Jo (played by Sadie Frost) is tired of the scene Billy is involved with, car theft, joy riding and ram raiding, but cannot drag him out of it. Sean Pertwee gives a good performance as another petty criminal Tommy, whose interests have grown to include shifting stolen goods, drugs, organised crime and generally more aspirational ideals.After being released from his first three-month tenure in prison, Billy immediately seeks out his old mates and gets back into his old ways. Tommy initially tries to make an ally of him with stories of organisation and easy money, but Billy is only interested in getting respect from the estate and destruction and adrenaline and soon makes himself an enemy of Tommy and his crew, with ultimately tragic consequences.Whilst the screenplay and direction are excellent, the film is totally let down by its script. Many of the character's exclamations and reposes are less than natural, some are downright baffling and some leave you cringing in your seat. It's not consistently bad, there are also genuinely heart wrenching moments and some excellent quotes, but you will also find yourself burying your head in your hands at other points and thinking "nobody says that!". Billy's two mostly annoying mates are stereotypes of stereotypes and there's also some representations of dark and dingy illegal "raves" that are... well, preposterous.But when all's said and done, despite the cheesy moments in the script, it's a good movie. The story, all the action aside, is really about Billy's seething self-hate and unwillingness to love and be loved. The cars, the ram-raiding, the police, Tommy, the estate... it's all just a backdrop to the story of the slow and tragic destruction of an depressed young man caught in a world he has learned only to hate.
Mary Smith-Sanchez (vivatexas) The problem of making movies directly from recent news it that these movies become dated very soon. Shopping is one of this movies, and trying to be "actual" to the nineties makes that the characters now are seen as a caricatures. They look like a bunch of whiny kids trying to be bad. Anyway, It was a good try. Not as bad as Trainspotting but in the same line. When some directors try to make "social" cinema the results can be annoying or amusing, and in this case is more amusing than annoying.Watch the movie, but don't take it seriously. I give it an one, just for comedy purposes.