SHALLOW GRAVE (Directed by Danny Boyle. Starring Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, Ken Stott)

A lot of extravagant praise has already been heaped on this low budget British thriller by British critics. It is easy to see why. While most British films seem to be part of the heritage industry, with the express purpose of attracting American tourists, Shallow Grave draws its inspiration from the brutal new independent cinema across the Atlantic. It is modern, amoral, tautly constructed, economic and nasty. In the world of Merchant Ivory, this is a welcome breath of poisoned air.

However comparisons to Tarantino are as misplaced as they are exaggerated. This is not wordy, wacky, witty British pulp, but a black comedy of murder and betrayal, more akin to The Coen Brothers nightmarishly twisting noir, Blood Simple. And for all its inventive use of limited resources, Danny Boyle’s debut feature lacks the polish of the master film-makers’ whose work it has been compared to, and suffers from other common British flaws. Apart from a certain drab appearance (we don’t have the light, perhaps, and we certainly don’t seem to have the makeup artists) its shares a tendency with too many British crime films to make all the characters unpleasant, leaving no place for the audience to empathise. It is an effective display of stylistic devices, rather than an emotionally involving piece of cinema.

As might be expected from a film with the word shallow in the title, deep it ain’t. It has a very standard premise: three friends come into temptation, commit a criminal act together, and find their relationship disintegrating in the face of pressures from inside (guilt, mistrust) and out (police and thieves on their trail). And perhaps as befits a film with the word grave in the title, the plot is full of holes. After committing what seems to be a perfect crime, and leaving no apparent clues, the police show up on their doorstep with so much information one can only conclude the force has been recruiting psychics.

Despite a general, and perhaps inevitable sense that Shallow Grave is not everything it has been cracked up to be (“The first unmissable film of the year,” according to those excitable folk at Empire magazine. What, only the first? And how many other unmissable films can we look forward to in 1995? And what, indeed, will happen to us if we miss an unmissable film? And why, if it is used so often by film critics, does the word on unmissable not appear in my dictionary? Am I missing something?) it is certainly a value for money thriller. The three central players make something out of unpleasantly caricatured roles, screenwriter John Hodges displays just enough wit and invention to sweep us past the more illogical developments of his plot and director Boyle keeps things moving at a cracking pace, conjuring up an effective atmosphere of mounting hysteria. Agile camerawork and jumpy editing open out the limited locations, and Boyle’s evident desire to use everything in his box of tricks to slap the audience about a bit ensures Shallow Grave is a genuinely visceral cinematic experience. And not a cup of tea or plate of scones in sight. I have never knowingly used the word unmissable to describe a film, but I’ll grant that this is certainly verycatchable.