Release Date: July 12th, 2013 (Limited)
Currently playing on VOD platforms
Director: Wayne Kramer
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 2/10
Despite being nearly two decades removed from the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, audiences are still seeing the influence brought on by it, mostly in the form shameless rip-offs. Such is the case with Wayne Kramer’s Pawnshop Chronicles, a film that was seemingly conceived in the bottom of the Wal-Mart VHS bargain bin sometime in the late nineties. Though it boasts a mostly solid cast, there’s absolutely no sign of originality here, and the end result is a sloppy, uninspired mess.
The film is broken up into three interconnected segments that all tie together around a crummy old pawn shop in the Deep South. Vincent D’Onofrio and Chi McBride play the proprietors of the establishment, and act as buffers in between each segment. The stories are also visualized like the titles of a comic book for some reason, similar to the bad directors cut of The Warriors, or Tales from the Crypt. This was completely illogical and made no sense, as it had absolutely nothing to do with the film as a whole.
Many of the other visual elements in the film were directly lifted from other films as well. We have the camera strapped to the actor while running a la Requiem For a Dream, the fast moving zooms and camera flips a la Guy Ritchie, and plenty of slow motion shots of bullet casings leaving guns.
Structurally, this is Pulp Fiction. There’s a huge cast of characters that all connect with each other some way or another, and while the film is extremely violent, it tries its best to be funny. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to laugh at, as every character is such a caricature, everything comes off as just being stupid, and not in a funny way. For example, Paul Walker and Kevin Rankin play two idiot meth heads who hatch a plan to steal some meth from another meth head played by Norman Reedus. Instead of just being able to enjoy the ridiculousness of what was transpiring, my focus wouldn’t sway from watching Paul Walker insistently playing with his beard and grinding his teeth. Sure, this is what tweakers do, but give me a break, he did more teeth grinding and beard playing than everyone in Spun combined.
The most interesting, yet entirely predictable, and ultimately disappointing segment was the second one, which involved Matt Dillon and Elijah Wood. Dillon discovers his missing wife’s ring in the pawn shop and begins to retrace its ownership back to Wood, who plays a Southern redneck version of Ariel Castro.
The final act is by far the worst, which focuses on a down on his luck Elvis impersonator played by Brendan Fraser. By this point I was begging for the credits, however there was a particularly painful climax to get through after the Elvis story.
Pawn Shop Chronicles is a complete waste of time. It’s all over the map tonally, every character is one dimensional and idiotic, and the end is laughably horrible. It fails to deliver on every level except a scene involving Elijah Wood, fish hooks, and a hammer. That scene is worth checking out.
