
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 17, 1995                   TAG: 9506200019
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`SHALLOW GRAVE' IS DEEP IN SUSPENSE

"Shallow Grave" is an exercise in suspense and character study that's so consistently surprising potential viewers should know as little as possible about the plot.

The setting is Glasgow, Scotland, but as narrator David (Christopher Eccleston) says, it could be any city.

David is a young accountant. He shares a large apartment with Alex (Ewan McGregor), a smart-alecky reporter, and Juliet (Kerry Fox), a doctor. They're looking for a roommate, but they're picky, rejecting and humiliating potential candidates ... until they meet Hugo (Keith Allen), and that's where this synopsis ends.

Writer John Hodge (a doctor by profession) and director Danny Boyle take Hitchcockian delight in setting up audience expectations and then twisting them a few unsettling degrees and adding a strong dash of black humor. Judged by the standards of most American crime films, the depiction of violence in this one is so restrained as to be almost polite. But in a couple of significant moments, Boyle's approach is nauseatingly effective.

Comparisons to the Coen brothers' "Blood Simple" come immediately to mind. Like that film, this one works through the characters.

The three protagonists are immediately recognizable. They've formed an insular clique, the kind that almost everyone has either observed from without or been a part of. That three-sided relationship is the commanding force in their lives until a fourth element is introduced. Then the internal dynamics become fluid as individuals assume new degrees of power and responsibility.

Almost all the action takes place within the apartment, but the pace moves so quickly - the film is never dull - that it doesn't feel constrained. Though Boyle isn't above showing off with his camera, the tricks are always in the service of the story and are usually employed to avoid slow spots.

As a rule, "little" films that lack star power have a hard time at the box office in competition with the studios' summer releases. "Shallow Grave" deserves to find an audience because it's that rarest of finds in today's entertainment world - a genuine original.

Shallow Grave

*** 1/2

A Gramercy Pictures release playing at The Grandin Theatre. 92 min. Rated R for subject matter, violence, strong language, brief nudity.

by CNB