Video Review

Gimme Shelter (1992)

Reviewed by Ty Burr | Jun 26, 1992
EW's GRADE
A+

Details Movie Rated: R; Genres: Documentary, Musical; With: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones; Distributor: ABKCO

Just rereleased on video, Gimme Shelter may be the greatest rock film ever made; it's certainly the most frightening. Mick Jagger hoped the 1969 free concert at California's Altamont Speedway would be ''a microcosmic society which sets an example to the rest of America.'' A cynic might say he got his wish: Altamont became the anti-Woodstock when the Maysles brothers' cameras caught one of the Hell's Angels hired for crowd control in the act of killing a bystander. The scene in which Jagger pleads for the fighting throng to ''be all one,'' then cues the band into the spiteful ''Under My Thumb,'' hints at what went wrong — with the concert in particular and the '60s in general. A+

Originally posted Jun 26, 1992 Published in issue #124-125 Jun 26, 1992 Order article reprints
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