Not a whole lot of U.S. moviegoers seemed to know about "Pawn Shop Chronicles" when it opened there last year. It had a limited release, then fizzled into the ether. Which is probably the best thing for the planet and its inhabitants, but to be fair, it has its moments. Best described as the movie equivalent of a long, tall Kool-Aid smoothie made by my brother when he was 8, it's toxic junk crammed with ingredients that are maybe not as bad as the stuff found in certain frozen foods on our very own shores. But it comes close. Very close.
Directed by Wayne Kramer ("Running Scared"), the film's main redemptive point is that everyone — from the cast to the dolly grip — surely had a roaring good time going to work. The limited-release thing worked in their favor: Freed from the restrictions of a big budget and studio to appease, Kramer and chums let rip with ludicrous plot lines, splashy brutality, extended torture scenes and shameless tributes to Quentin Tarantino films, specifically "Pulp Fiction." Oh, and there's a whole lot of foul language and white-supremacist racism strewn about. An example of what happens when you get a room full of beer-glugging, gun-slinging, meth-addicted male characters with no overbearing love story to keep them in line.
"Pawn Shop Chronicles" is an omnibus affair that starts off at General Lee's Pawn Shop, owned and operated by Alton (Vincent D'Onofrio) and his underling Johnson (Chi McBride). A procession of desperate souls parade in and out, hoping to find cash and failing miserably. In "The Shotgun," meth-heads Randy (Kevin Rankin) and Raw Dog (Paul Walker, who was killed in a driving accident in November) hatch a plan to screw over their pal Vernon (Lukas Haas) and make off with a sizable chunk of money, but then Randy pawns his shotgun for gas money, making their scheme kind of hard to pull off.