‘Shopping’: a fascinating start for two careers that went in completely different directions
When it comes to finding success in Hollywood, luck often plays a big part. You might star in a great film that no one sees, become typecast because of one mistake, or squander an opportunity that turns out to be a hit. You can never be quite sure what you’re getting yourself into when you work in the industry, and as a result, most actors have pretty interesting filmographies.
Jude Law is one of Britain’s most well-known faces. He has acted alongside some of Hollywood’s greatest stars, from Paul Newman to Philip Seymour Hoffman, earning various accolades and nominations, such as two Academy Award nominations for his appearances in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. He has starred in a range of genres, acting in movies like Closer, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Road to Perdition, The Holiday, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Peter Pan & Wendy, and more recently, the Fantastic Beasts series.
Yet, one of his first major acting roles was in a certain filmmaker’s directorial debut, and while Law has gone on to have an incredibly successful career, we can’t say the same about the latter. After cutting his teeth in the theatre, Law appeared in a few television roles, which led him to his first proper feature film part. He was offered the role of Billy in Shopping, a 1994 movie directed by Paul WS Anderson.
While another similarly named filmmaker broke through in the ‘90s with titles like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, the British Anderson failed to make much of a dent with Shopping and has continued to make movies that have received largely mixed to negative reviews. Law had no idea that starring in Shopping would eventually lead to many incredible job offers and accolades (and his marriage to co-star Sadie Frost), but thanks to his performance in Anderson’s largely forgotten film, he became one of his generation’s most popular actors.
For Anderson, success was somewhat apparent after Shopping—a bizarre British take on cyberpunk/slick action stories better executed on bigger Hollywood budgets. He made Mortal Kombat, which was received well by fans of the game, but this video game-to-movie approach soon became his trademark.
He directed Resident Evil, which was greeted with negative reviews, before directing (or sometimes just writing) the rest of the franchise, which is considered pretty dire. Still, these films remain commercially successful enough for them to keep being made, and Anderson is surely sitting on a comfortable sum as a result.
Anderson has also created various other cinematic abominations, like Event Horizon, which lost almost $20million at the box office. It was heavily criticised and should’ve been a sign that perhaps directing wasn’t Anderson’s strong suit. Still, he followed it up with a string of negatively-reviewed films, like Soldier and Aliens vs. Predator.
Sadly for Anderson, the bad reviews haven’t stopped coming. In 2011, he used a strong cast to create The Three Musketeers, but that was a flop. His film Pompeii did slightly better, but it still did not perform great, while his direction was again criticised when he made yet another video game adaptation in 2020, Monster Hunter.
So, while Law was lucky enough to follow up his role in the rather forgettable Shopping with many acclaimed performances, it seems that irrespective of the projects Anderson has taken on, he has rarely been met with any kind of acclaim.
