roseybaby63-59-43149 I never heard of this movie before. I don't remember ever seeing it advertised. I don't even know if it ran in U.S. Theaters. I was looking through movies on Demand and happened upon it. The title intrigued me. The plot sounded interesting and then I saw that Vincent D'Onofrio and Paul Walker were in it...I was hooked. I'm so glad I found this movie. I've watched it twice so far.It's an anthology movie, which is one of my favorite types of movies. Each of the three stories originate from General Lee's Pawn Shop. It's here where we're treated to the characters of Alton and his friend, Johnson. The conversations these two have are pretty damned funny. The pawn shop is a central spot in the movie as the movie begins and ends here and each story begins in the shop. The first story, 'Shotgun' is my favorite story. It centers around three men... Raw Dog (Paul Walker), Randy (Kevin Rankin) and Vernon (Lukas Haas) and there half baked plot to rob meth from meth maker and dealer Stanley (an unrecognizable Norman Reedus). This story had me laughing out lout a whole lot. The conversations between Raw Dog and Randy are funny. Of course, things start going wrong from the very beginning and have an explosive ending. I don't want to give too much story away, but trust me, the whole "clown mask" thing had me falling off my chair. The scene with The Man was a bit odd, but what the heck, the whole thing is odd. The second story, 'The Ring' is a much darker tale. A man, Richard (Matt Dillon), stops at the pawn shop to pawn his new bride's ring because something was wrong with his account. While there, he sees the ring he had made for his first wife, who had mysteriously disappeared six years earlier. He sends his new bride away, buys Alton's car for sale and goes on a quest to find out what happened to his wife. Oh, yeah, he sorta loses his mind. What he discovers involves a man named Johnny Shaw (Elijah Wood) and some disturbing goings on. I liked how this story ended. The final story, 'The Medallion' involves a man who performs a tribute to "The King"...Elvis Presley. Ricky (a nearly unrecognizable Brenden Fraser) is a sad sack of a guy. He wants to be Elvis, but he's doing free shows, which aren't very good. His girlfriend leaves him and he ends up at the pawn shop. He coasted in on fumes and pawns his gold medallion that actually belonged to Elvis. The town is weird and there's a strange scene involving the two barber shops. Ricky gets a chance to make a deal for success. All it will cost is his soul. This final story strangely brings all the stories together and explains a few things. Everything comes around full circle at the end, which takes place, of course, in the pawn shop. The stories, characters and acting are all really good. It's like taking a crazy roller coaster ride. I have already recommended this movie to many of my friends. I liked it that much. I also think it has excellent potential to become a cult favorite/classic. The dialog is so good and very quote worthy. If you ever get a chance to watch this little gem, I recommend you do so. It's worth it.

videorama-759-859391 I love original and inventive movies. Something totally afresh. This movie fits that quota. It's most saddest fact, the late great Paul Walker, gives his best ever performance. I can't believe how fu..in' good he was. You sort of get the idea if from the trailer, this is something out of a Coen brothers film. But later travels a darker, more unforeseen path. For the first third, you'll just enjoy Walkers's presence as a race hating, redneck, constant beard scratching young hillbilly, with not much upstairs, who keeps having visions- seeing Elvis, one of his latest. Don't worry, you'll meet Elvis, later on, wonderfully personified by Fraser, as a bad impersonator/loser, bringing a lot of meat of his character, in a film, where each performance, is as impressive as the next. The acting bar has been set very high here. The film deals with inter related stories, centred around a lot of people (di..heads) who come into this pawn shop, manned by the great and tubby D'onofrio, delivering yet another performance of excellence. A very special diamond ring that belongs to a woman, who's been missing for six years has wound up in this pawn shop. Dillon the husband, identifies it, thus begins a quest to track down the former folk that pawned it, which soon brings us into the dark territory of the film. If reading this and you have seen Kramer's former, Tarantino's shoot em' up like piece, Running Scared, you'll know what I mean. And here again, I forgive Kramer, as if to ruin or put the dampeners on it as to these sick themes. The original idea of the story is apology enough. Our revenge driven Dillon, exacts a an inventively sick and shocking punishment on Wood, (our new 'Maniac') the keeper of all these girls, he's kept in cages in these silos. He uses them in private porno flicks, he makes, while also starring, and tugs his bishop over them. Dillon's wife is contained in another silo, on the account that she is special-number one. How she thanks Dillon is twisted. After rescuing the wife, Dillon gives Wood, seconds, where gladly we're denied from watching him go to work on Wood, where Wood's pain is just implied by subtitled yowls and squeals. I guess not being everyone's cup of tea, Pawn Shop Chronicles, is such originally different fun, but too, it's such a shame, this was to be one of Walker's last ever performances, where now his acting was really starting to impress.

brando647 PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES is…weird. Now that I've watched it twice and shown it to a friend to get an outside opinion, it seems the general consensus is that it's not a great movie. I'm not even sure it's a good movie. But it's weird and you find yourself drawn into the events as they unfold to see where it will lead to next. I don't know that all the comparisons to PULP FICTION are well founded. It's got the same non-linear storytelling with multiple stories happening at the same time and often interacting with each other, but it has none of the style and substance of Tarantino's original masterpiece. I suppose it could be said that PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES is a loving homage to it but it's nowhere near the same level. If anything, it reminds me more of the CREEPSHOW movies and it even includes pulp magazine/comic book title screens for each of the three stories presented in the film. This is an anthology movie with each of the three stories starting in a small pawn shop in a fictional Georgia town: a couple of white supremacist meth-heads plan to rob their dealer, a man discovers a clue to his wife's disappearance several years prior, and an Elvis impersonator prepares for a performance at the local county fair while coming to grips with the fact that his life has fallen to pieces. And it all starts in a little pawn shop run by slow-witted Alton (Vincent D'Onofrio) who passes the time chatting with his friend Johnson (Chi McBride) about all things meaningless.The film has a lot of problems and they're not all easy for me to pinpoint. One issue didn't become clear until the very end when the end credits began to roll and I noticed an executive producer credit for Fred Durst. Yes, that Fred Durst. I suppose it made sense, considering the movie. This is the sort of movie you'd expect from a man who put out an album called Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. On a technical level, the movie feels very basic. There a couple clever transitions (the filmmakers had a theme of using reflections/mirrors to transition between scenes) but the majority of the movie is very dully shot. A lot of quick zooms and extreme close-ups ramp up during action scenes but there isn't much else. The writing feels derivative at times too. Regardless of whether it can be compared to PULP FICTION, you can tell that the movie was certainly inspired in some part by it. There are attempts at Tarantino dialogue but most of them fall flat. It has a few good ones, particularly a scene between Raw Dog (Paul Walker) and Randy (Kevin Rankin) as they discuss why exactly their white supremacists, but a good deal of it falters. There's a lot of it in the scenes featuring D'Onofrio and McBride where they'll chat about porn or whether it's all right to make fictional characters black, but it feels forced. It's not helped with D'Onofrio's weird, stunted line delivery. I'm not sure where he got his inspiration for his strange speech pattern in the movie but it was distracting. And, finally, the movie ends on the weakest story of the series. The first tale got you pumped, the second upped the ante, and the third one nearly bored me to death. The tale of a horrible Elvis impersonator desperate for success fills space with a lengthy performance of 'Amazing Grace' that, while it ties together a lot of other elements from the film, nearly put me to sleep. The movie rejuvenates itself just before the end credits with a fun little scene in the pawn shop but the damage was done and it left a bad taste that tainted my final opinion of the movie.For a movie so small, there's a surprising cool cast involved. Granted some of them are limited to mere cameos (Thomas Jane) and others might go completely unnoticed (Norman Reedus). The movie is filled with familiar faces from film and TV. Paul Walker (also a producer on the movie) is almost unrecognizable and a lot of fun as meth-head Raw Dog, and Matt Dillon seems to fit right in to such a strange little film as the husband who renews his search for his missing wife after finding her wedding ring in the pawn shop. Between his role in SIN CITY and his performance here as Johnny Shaw, I'm really starting to worry about Elijah Wood. He seems real intent on shaking off any hobbit memories with sociopathic characters intent on giving nightmares. And then there's Brendan Fraser as Elvis impersonator Ricky Baldoski in the final tale. Fraser himself does an excellent job, even if his improv is cringe- worthy (for proof, watch the blooper reel that runs over the end credits). I don't blame Fraser for the weak final act; I blame the writing. I can't remember the last time I've seen Fraser in a movie (aside from his little cameo in the first G.I. JOE movie) and, while I've never been a big fan of his, it's cool to see him doing something off-kilter like this.PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES isn't bad. It even had me believing, for a while at least, that it was better than it is. It's crazy and plenty entertaining, and it'll leave you with questions by the end. There seems to be a theme of religious imagery throughout the movie but I can't quite figure out what the filmmakers were going after. Thomas Jane and Sam Hennings are obvious religious figures within the context of the story that offer characters salvation or revenge in a couple of strange moments, but all I can figure is that this fictional little Georgia town is infested with Satan. I'm probably reading too much into it, as PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES is just 90 minutes of white trash craziness.

christiank7 I gave it 2 because there are some funny moments but moments do not make a good film nor even a relatively interesting one. Kramer is showing us his very own rather disjointed comprehension of reality. Other reviews have pointed to the non interaction of the plot sequences but this is actually the least problematic with this attempt at dark humour. What is really annoying about this film is the stereotypes he uses to convey his liberal and very confused agenda. It is insulting to almost everybody except the holy in-crowd of Hollywood and of course the jews (this is a very small part of the film but it rings big bells). Rednecks and trailer trash seem to be his favorite ICONS. Pathetic really for a guy who is himself such a misery of a man. Google him if you do not believe what I am referring to here. Back to the film: the cast is actually the only saving grace but then when you only have split moment scenes you can afford to be brilliant. Really great acting comes from sustained performances throughout a challenging period of a plot which this film actually does not really have. That in itself is OK but then what is the point of the exercise? Good question without an answer. There is another disturbing element and it is not only with this film but with the connections that this Kramer is or has already made with a certain Hollywood group that smells so much like LIBERALISM gone mad. His future attempts will be avoided if we are so unlucky as to have any.