Spine 616: Shallow Grave

Lost in Criterion

Add Danny Boyle to the long list of British directors who claim their work is apolitical, seemingly only to distance themselves from Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. But it doesn't take the death of the author to find a political read of his brutal debut feature Shallow Grave (1994), a film about the corrupting influence of money on relationships, about how greed inherently leads to violence and even if you can convince yourself that your extractive profits have no victims, well, they soon will. Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor star as the victims of their own avarice in this fantastic film.