THE CIRCLE (France/UAE/US - 2017) Directed by James Ponsoldt. Written by James Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers. Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Bill Paxton, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, Nate Corddry, Judy Reyes, Mamoudou Athie, Smith Cho, Amir Talai, Poorna Jagannathan, Eve Gordon. (PG-13, 110 mins) Based on the 2013 novel by Dave Eggers, who shares screenplay credit with director James Ponsoldt (THE SPECTACULAR NOW), THE CIRCLE has a premise with such a short window of topicality that the movie adaptation feels dated just four years later. It doesn't help that TV shows like MR. ROBOT and BLACK MIRROR have already explored similar themes much more effectively, but THE CIRCLE loses the satirical elements of Eggers' novel and opts for a much more heavy-handed approach. What might've worked on the page doesn't work always work on the screen, as characters here don't have conversations as much as they drop exposition and make important speeches. Everything has to be simplified so the audience can stay caught up, then it starts glossing over things so much that the entire second half of the film is a complete mess. A lot of this was likely due to negative test screenings leading to extensive reshoots being done in January 2017, just three months before the film's release and long after filming wrapped in late 2015. The film goes in a completely different direction than the book, so much so that it's a safe assumption that the finished film isn't exactly a collaborative effort between Eggers and Ponsoldt.
Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is temping in customer service at the local water department when her Scottish college friend Annie (Karen Gillan) lands her an interview with her employer, The Circle. A Google-like tech empire in Silicon Valley, The Circle is always pioneering advances in social media and software dedicated to making people "connected." Their latest product launch involves "SeeChange," a tiny, round camera that can be placed anywhere and go unnoticed, utilizing GPS and facial recognition software and generating much in the way of moral and ethical dilemmas over privacy and surveillance. Circle founder and CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) claims that such advances are for the greater good of humanity, but loner Mae's gut reaction is one of apprehension. The mostly millennial employees base their lives around The Circle, living in dorm-like apartments "on campus," and participating in "suggested" activities on their off time with a fervent and almost cult-like devotion to their employer. Mae is passive-aggressively reprimanded by a Circle social media adviser for not taking part in the events and for going home to visit her parents--mom Bonnie (Glenne Headly) and dad Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton in his last film)--and she's somewhat alarmed that The Circle already knows her father is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Mae is chastised for taking a job with The Circle by her childhood friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane of BOYHOOD), who hates texting and the internet and has no doubt condescendingly uttered, at least once in his life, "I don't even own a TV." Her friendship with Mercer falls apart after she shares a pic of his custom-made antler chandeliers and outraged millennials start following him around to harass him get in his face, and shout "deer killer!" After an incident involving her trespassing to go kayaking ends with her being rescued after being seen on a SeeChange camera aimed at the bay, Mae makes the ultimate commitment to The Circle: she goes "transparent," wearing a small camera 24/7 to document every moment of her life for Circle's 240 million members. This plot turn could've been a great BLACK MIRROR episode in the hands of Charlie Brooker, and it also recalls both Bertrand Tavernier's remarkably ahead-of-its-time cult film DEATH WATCH (1980) as well as Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), but once Circler comments turn up on the screen for most of the remainder of the film, it more or less starts to look like INSTAGRAM: THE MOVIE.
Mae's advance up the ladder at The Circle puts a strain on her friendship with Annie as well as her relationship with her parents, who are also required to install cameras at their house. Those cameras are taken offline when Mae's followers, seeing what Mae sees, accidentally catch a glimpse of her parents having sex with the aid of a penis pump for her disabled father, humiliating both of them. Mae also forms a muddled alliance with Ty Lavitte (John Boyega of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), a legendary hacker who works for The Circle, designing a program that's been hijacked by Bailey and his business partner Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) to spy on every Circle user and store all of their personal information, phone calls, e-mails, texts, etc. Much to Lavitte's disgust, Bailey and Stenton use this information to blackmail a senator (Eve Gordon) who's been publicly critical of The Circle, and with Mae's help, they even concoct a plan to tie The Circle into voter registration records and not only allow users to vote through their Circle account, but require them to be Circle users in order to vote ("The US government needs us more than we need them," Stenton says). There's some heady implications in a lot of what goes on in THE CIRCLE, especially the ultimate fate of Mercer as a scathing critique of social media hysteria, but Ponsoldt bungles it at every turn. THE CIRCLE is content to lecture the audience and too often comes off like it's taking an approach to technology that's equal parts Stubborn Luddite and Scared Old Man. What could've been a smart, topical critique of our reliance on technology and our willingness to sacrifice privacy and human interaction for convenience and a feeling of connection with the rest of the world comes off as smug and sanctimonious, complete with a laughably simplistic non-ending that has Mae staging a revolt against Bailey and Stenton and literally Pied Pipering her newly-woke colleagues out of a darkened, pitch black auditorium through an exit door, outside into the light. Watson is a capable actress but she's strangely one-note here. Boyega seems to have been affected most by the reshoots, looking like he spent his entire time on the set unsuccessfully trying to locate Ponsoldt, while Paxton musters what trace amounts of dignity he can with a penis pump and in another scene that requires him to piss himself. What little novelty this misfire offers comes from seeing Hanks and Oswalt atypically cast as quietly sinister villains, but neither seems to have spent more than a few days working on this, enough for one to surmise that when Bailey turns to Stenton at the end and says "We are so fucked," it's very possible that it was just Hanks talking to Oswalt without knowing the cameras were rolling. Altered extensively from Eggers' novel, THE CIRCLE is disjointed, already past its sell-by date, and completely unsure of what point its even trying to make.
There's a good movie to be made of the so-called "Satanic Panic" of the mid-1980s. It was a time when horror movies and heavy metal were blamed when impressionable kids did horrible things and a Satanic cult was believed to be emerging after dark throughout small-town America, practicing all manner of Satanic ritual abuse. Written and directed by the once-promising Alejandro Amenabar, who made his name with 1997's OPEN YOUR EYES and the revered 2001 ghost story THE OTHERS, REGRESSION could almost describe the filmmaker's career momentum over the last decade. This is just Amenabar's second feature since helming 2004's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-winner THE SEA INSIDE: nobody saw his 2009 historical epic AGORA and REGRESSION received only a scant US release two years after it was shot. By tackling the subject of Satanic ritual abuse, Amenabar is working at cross purposes: he spends 90 minutes trying to fashion a creepy, supernatural horror film but anyone old enough to remember the Satanic Panic knows how it became a big nothing, and those who weren't around for it are bound to be disappointed by the historically accurate but cinematically empty resolution.
"Inspired by true events," REGRESSION takes place in a small Minnesota town in 1990, even though the height of Satanic Panic was more 1985-86). Hard-nosed, obsessive detective Kenner (Ethan Hawke) catches what seems to be a open-and-shut child molestation case involving mechanic John Gray (David Dencik). Gray confesses to molesting his teenage daughter Angela (Emma Watson), even though he has no memory of doing so. With Angela seeking refuge at the local church under the protection of the parish priest (Lothaire Bluteau), Gray undergoes regressive hypnotherapy with psychologist Dr. Raines (David Thewlis), during which he recalls another person present while the molestation took place: local cop Nesbitt (Aaron Ashmore). Kenner impulsively throws Nesbitt in jail and Angela reveals that her father, grandmother (Dale Dickey, once again cast as the second-string Melissa Leo), and numerous other town residents are part of a Satanic cult that engaged in everything from sex rituals to murdering and eating newborn babies. It isn't long before Kenner's paranoia takes over and he believes himself the next target of the cult. Considering that the Satanic Panic was little more than irrational hype from worried parents, reactionary law enforcement, and an overzealous media latching on to an alleged phenomenon guaranteed to get attention and scare the public into a frenzy, fashioning REGRESSION as a straight-up horror movie for most of its duration probably wasn't the way to approach this if Amenabar was making a serious examination of the topic. By the end, especially after a really dumb revelation that undermines everything about the Satanic Panic for the sake of a stupid twist, Amenabar has backed himself into a corner and debunked his own movie. This really should've been something more, but I can't really say what. And neither can Amenabar. (R, 106 mins)
SYNCHRONICITY
(US - 2016)
A frustratingly empty time travel sci-fi saga, SYNCHRONICITY goes for the trendy retro '80s look and feel, but doesn't accomplish much else. If it had a story worth telling, all of the fetishizing with the synths and the cold, blue cityscapes would provide effective accompaniment, but in the end, that's all SYNCHRONICITY has and it just comes off as PRIMER remade as BLADE RUNNER fan fiction. Scientist Jim Beale (Chad McKnight) is working on a top-secret project to open a traversable wormhole in the space-time continuum. His benefactor, the sinister and obscenely wealthy Klaus Meisner (a nicely-cast Michael Ironside), a guy we instantly know is sinister because he's named "Klaus Meisner," naturally wants to use it for power and financial gain, but after admitting that the ramifications of the project could have globally apocalyptic ramifications, Beale uses it for something far more altruistic: chasing a girl. The girl is Abby, who may or may not have come from a time jump and is played by Brianne Davis, who looks like Jennifer Lawrence and sounds like Joey Lauren Adams, but plays the part as if she's Aubrey Plaza playing Sean Young's Rachael in BLADE RUNNER. SYNCHRONICITY is very beholden to the 1982 Ridley Scott classic, almost annoyingly so, from its blatantly Vangelis-like score to the Syd Mead-inspired visual futurism on a budget. Writer-director Jacob Gentry, who was also one of three directors of 2008's inexplicably acclaimed THE SIGNAL, fills SYNCHRONICITY with unsubtle references to other movies, whether it's Beale's colleague (AJ Bowen) shouting "We are messing with the primal forces of nature here!" or the constant film noir shout-outs, with lighting through Venetian blinds or constantly spinning window fans. The exposition and dialogue are cloddish as well, like Beale proclaiming "We are precious moments from a topological anomaly!" or dropping some clumsy exposition like "Then I will have proof of the findings to show our venture capitalist, Klaus Meisner." From the get-go, SYNCHRONICITY just rubbed me the wrong way, and the glacially slow pace, the shameless BLADE RUNNER worship, the bland performance by McKnight, who's not unlike a sedated Casey Affleck, and Gentry giving the great Ironside almost nothing to do but sneer (which he does beautifully) did little to win me over. These retro homages really only work if there's a engaging story to tell, like in THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, or TURBO KID (which also co-starred Ironside). All Gentry does here is pilfer from other, infinitely better movies while bringing nothing of his own to the table. He should've just saved time and money and filmed himself watching a double feature of BLADE RUNNER and PRIMER. You'd be better off doing exactly that. Cool poster, though. (R, 100 mins)
SUBMERGED
(US - 2015)
A limo careens into a river and sinks, the people inside unable to get out, the water rising and the air in short supply. Seems like a can't-miss premise for an intense nail-biter of a thriller, but writer Scott Milam (the 2012 remake of MOTHER'S DAY) and director Steven C. Miller (SILENT NIGHT, the 2012 remake of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT) do everything they can to screw it up. Insisting on telling the story in a fractured timeline is the biggest mistake, as it completely eliminates any sense of escalating tension to cut away to flashbacks every few minutes. The key to pulling something like this off is staying in the limo, but by the eight-minute mark, Miller, fresh off his EXTRACTION triumph with former actor Bruce Willis, is already out of the limo, filling us on in the backstories of the characters and how they arrived at their current predicament. Who gives a shit? Limo driver Matt (Jonathan Bennett, who played Bo Duke in the DTV DUKES OF HAZZARD sequel and replaced Ryan Reynolds in a DTV VAN WILDER sequel) is a bodyguard for Jessie (Talulah Riley), the spoiled daughter of billionaire business CEO Hank Searles (a slumming Tim Daly), who recently laid off a ton of workers. Turns out the party limo filled with several of Jessie's friends was targeted by disgruntled ex-employees looking to abduct Jessie for a fat ransom from Searles (or Sayles--in an apparent homage to OVER THE TOP's Lincoln Hawk/Hawks, the movie can't seem to decide).
Instead of letting the suspense build in the limo--where everybody starts arguing ("Every time you kiss her, you're tasting my dick!")--Miller and Milam spend entirely too much screen time on flashbacks involving Matt's troubled, drug-dealing younger brother Dylan (Cody Christian), which ultimately does nothing other than pad the running time. You'll be able to spot the puppet masters behind all the mayhem long before Matt does, mainly because of one character who acts weird for no reason (and later talks in the kind of condescending, sing-songy tone that only one-dimensional villains in bad movies and TV shows use), and another who's played by a prominently-billed, well-known, veteran actor who's barely in the first 90% of the movie. Also featuring Mario Van Peebles, SUBMERGED sinks in almost record time, with Miller demonstrating absolutely no ability to stage any kind of suspense or action sequence (the climax has one of the most ineptly-shot fight scenes in recent memory), with only a couple of surprisingly gory splatter scenes and a competent, if slightly bland performance by Bennett (who looks like the guy you get when Karl Urban doesn't return your calls and Brandon Routh lies and says he's busy) to save it from total uselessness. Even by the standards of the VOD scrapyard SUBMERGED, is at the bottom of the heap. (Unrated, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
NOAH (US - 2014) Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Leo McHugh Carroll, Marton Csokas, Madison Davenport, voices of Nick Nolte, Frank Langella, Kevin Durand, Mark Margolis. (PG-13, 138 mins)
Biblical purists aren't going to go for Darren Aronofsky's revisionist take on Noah's Ark, which is faithful to the point of including Noah and an ark. At times seeming like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Bible, Aronofsky's NOAH succeeds as epic cinema and as part of the bigger picture of the filmmaker's work as a whole. One of Aronofsky's recurrent themes, from PI (1998), REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), THE FOUNTAIN (2006), THE WRESTLER (2008) all the way to BLACK SWAN (2010), is the obsessive, frequently maniacal, and all-consuming nature of their protagonists. In that respect, Russell Crowe's Noah is cut from the same cloth as Ellen Burstyn's Sara Goldfarb and her diet pills in REQUIEM, Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson in THE WRESTLER or Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers in BLACK SWAN. To some degree, Aronofsky's characters are perpetually in a head-on descent into self-destructive madness.
Such is the case with Noah, a descendant of Adam & Eve's third son Seth. Though "God" is never invoked, "The Creator" supplies Noah with a vision of the world's flooded end as punishment for man's sins. Noah is entrusted to build an ark, to which The Creator will direct all of the world's animals to begin life anew after its watery destruction. Noah spends ten years building the massive ark with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), their sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter and Shem's love interest Ila (Emma Watson), left barren from injuries sustained in a massacre of her people and rescued by Noah and Naameh years earlier. He also gets assistance from a group of fallen angels known as The Watchers, stone giants who resemble ancient Transformers with the voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella. As the animals make their way to the under-construction ark (and a steam potion puts them in a state of hibernation), warrior-king and Cain descendant Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) decides to kill distant relative Noah and orders his army to take control of the ark in an attempt to survive The Creator's extermination of mankind.
Winstone!
But the massive flood is just the beginning, as middle child Ham is resentful of his brother's love of Ila and angry enough to be privy to the manipulation of Tubal-Cain. And as the situation grows more dire, Naameh's request of a gift from Noah's grandfather Methusaleh (Anthony Hopkins) disrupts Noah's single-minded drive and pushes him to the point of homicidal mania. So yes, to say Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel take some liberties with the source material is an understatement. But a straight Biblical adaptation was never in the cards anyway, even before Paramount added disclaimers to the advertising that stated as much. Obviously, one's devotion and attachment to the story will likely dictate the response, but personally, as someone who has no commitment to the Bible and whose church of choice is the big screen, I found NOAH to be exciting, ambitious filmmaking. With THE WRESTLER and BLACK SWAN, Aronofsky kept things relatively low-budget after the brilliant THE FOUNTAIN proved to be a costly (and mismarketed) flop for Warner Bros. Given the power granted to bottom-line-obsessed execs and focus-group mouth-breathers, the fact that Paramount gave Aronofsky $125 million to make NOAH and largely left him alone to make the film he wanted to make and disregarded the test audience feedback and released the director's preferred cut is a major miracle itself. Aronofsky had been toying with the idea of helming a mega-budget epic, but turned down MAN OF STEEL and left THE WOLVERINE during pre-production, opting instead to wait until the time was right for NOAH.
"What a fool belieeeeeeves...."
Aronofsky takes a huge gamble in making Noah extraordinarily unlikable and practically deranged in the second half as he'll stop at nothing to follow through with The Creator's request (as the years go on, Noah's hair grays and at times, Crowe resembles a feral Michael McDonald). Utilizing CGI and some of the same sort of minimalist visual trickery seen in THE FOUNTAIN, Aronofsky creates a visually stunning world in NOAH. The sequence detailing the onset of the flood while the ark is under attack by Tubal-Cain's men is terrifying to watch and jaw-dropping in its scope and a must-see on a large screen. Some of the stuff involving The Watchers is a little goofy (but I'm always up for some Nick Nolte grumbling) and sometimes, it feels a little too derivative of the LORD OF THE RINGS, but in an era when most multiplex movies are bland, uninspired, and interchangeable, NOAH is unique even when it's borrowing an occasional element here and there. It's the strangest Biblical epic in years and so much of it could've gone so horribly awry, that even on those rare instances where something doesn't work, you're still admiring the chutzpah of the whole endeavor. Even if you vehemently disagree with the out-of-the-box approach Aronofsky takes--and nothing's going to change your mind--the fact that NOAH even exists is proof that Hollywood might still give a shit about artistic vision.
Sofia Coppola's latest film is an account of the rash of 2008-2009 burglaries of celebrity homes in the Hollywood Hills committed by a group of privileged teenagers dubbed the "Bling Ring." It had the unfortunate timing to be released right after Harmony Korine's more flashy and impressive SPRING BREAKERS, and despite some stinging observations of its protagonists' coddled lifestyles, it doesn't really have much to say. It starts out fine, as troubled rich kid Marc (Israel Broussard) arrives at a new school and immediately befriends Rebecca (Katie Chang). Historically a misfit, Marc is welcomed into Rebecca's clique--also consisting of sisters Nicki (Emma Watson) and Sam (Taissa Farmiga), and their friend Chloe (Claire Julien)--and petty crimes committed out of boredom soon lead to burglarizing celebrity mansions after they read that Paris Hilton will be out of town. They go to Hilton's home and find the keys under the mat. Hilton is out of town so much that they go back several times, and also hit the homes of Lindsay Lohan, THE HILLS star Audrina Patridge, and Orlando Bloom, and bring along Nicki and Sam's younger sister Emily (Georgia Rock) to Megan Fox's house because she's small enough to fit through a doggy door and let everyone else in. Like any group of young and inexperienced criminals, they get too cocky and stupid for their own good, not just in their repeat visits to Hilton's house, but posting pics of themselves with the stolen merchandise on their Facebook pages. And of course, Rebecca, the de facto ringleader, tries to throw everyone under the bus when the shit hits the fan.
The story behind THE BLING RING is a interesting one, so it's hard to tell why the film ends up such an inert trifle, especially in the capable hands of Coppola (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, LOST IN TRANSLATION). Maybe it's that in her attempts to convey the shallow and vacuous lives of the "Bling Ring," Coppola inadvertently creates a shallow and vacuous film. Once the premise and the players are established, the film becomes one montage after another of the titular group hanging out, doing drugs, clubbing, and taking selfies. There are some high points: Watson is very good and Leslie Mann gets some laughs as Nicki's, Sam's, and Emily's new agey, home-schooling mother whose educational curriculum is based on Rhonda Byrne's bestselling book The Secret. There's probably a solid crime film to be made of this story, but it just plays like a less horrific, rich-kid, L.A. ennui version of Larry Clark's BULLY. (R, 90 mins)
JAVA HEAT (US - 2013)
JAVA HEAT is a throwback actioner from the L.A.-based Margate House Films, a company owned by former political commentator Rob Allyn (producer, co-writer) and his son Conor (co-writer, director). Though an American company, they work primarily in Indonesia, and JAVA HEAT does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of Java and Conor Allyn admirably goes for real explosions and stunt work instead of the usual CGI that we get in every other product from the Hollywood assembly line. While the Allyns' sense of filmmaking aesthetics are admirable, their script is pretty weak and not helped at all by a bland leading man in TWILIGHT co-star Kellan Lutz. Lutz is Jake Wilde, an AWOL Marine posing as a grad student in Indonesian art history, in Java on a personal mission to eliminate a terror cell run by a Frenchman named Malik, played by what once might've been Mickey Rourke. Jake forms an uneasy, bickering, culture-clashing alliance with local cop and devout Muslim Hashim (Indonesian superstar Ario Bayu) to bring down Malik...if they don't kill each other first!
It's obvious that the younger Allyn is a disciple of big-budget '80s and early '90s actioners and he does an admirable job of emulating the look of those films, even in the unique (to American audiences, at least) setting. But other than some nice, real explosions and a few decent action sequences, JAVA HEAT is pretty boring. Some of that falls on Lutz, who's just not an interesting actor, but the story is pretty hollow and formulaic to the point of catatonia. It's overlong and badly-paced, and doesn't make good use of cosmetic-surgery-gone-horribly-awry cautionary tale Rourke, who lumbers around like the Frankenstein monster, utilizing a horrid French accent that's so thick and garbled that he's often subtitled even when speaking English. It might've worked if he'd cut loose and played it crazy, but since Rourke is obviously bored, he creates a boring character (though there is one cool shot of him walking away from an explosion in slo-mo). Wasn't THE WRESTLER supposed to rescue him from this kind of junk? Or has he finally burned every remaining bridge in his quest to squander all of the goodwill that brilliant performance earned? If you want to see Rourke play the bad guy in dumb action movie, just watch DOUBLE TEAM again. Allyn shows bits of style here and there, and with a script from someone other than him and/or his dad, he might have a future as a reliable, go-to DTV action director of the Isaac Florentine variety. But for now, JAVA HEAT doesn't really get the job done. (R, 104 mins)
PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES (US - 2013)
Anchor Bay barely released this incredibly awful, absurdly tardy PULP FICTION ripoff that plays like it should've gone straight-to-video in 1996. Co-produced by Limp Bizkit mainman Fred Durst, who was originally set to direct before the job went to the once-promising Wayne Kramer (THE COOLER, RUNNING SCARED), PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES tells a trio of stories centered on a rundown pawn shop in the hillbilly south run by Vincent D'Onofrio and Chi McBride. First off, a crew of brainless meth heads--including Paul Walker and Lukas Haas--can't get their shit together to follow through with their half-assed plan of robbing the area's top meth cooker (Norman Reedus, his face hidden behind a respirator mask). The next has Matt Dillon ditching his new bride (Rachelle Lefevre) when he discovers his missing first wife's ring at the pawn shop, sending him on a quest for revenge and the truth behind her disappearance. The final story involves the redemption of a hopelessly down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator (Brendan Fraser) who can't even scrape together some pocket change for a coffee at a greasy spoon. Written by Adam Minarovich, PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES stumbles at every turn as Kramer tries to replicate the balls-out insanity and comic book mindset of RUNNING SCARED but fails miserably, and the film is so slavishly devoted to its Tarantino stylings that you quickly go from feeling sorry for it to being actively pissed off at its sheer laziness, wallowing in sleaze and would-be "shock" bits as it drags on to an exhausting 112 minutes. Wasting an interesting supporting cast that had some cult-movie potential (there's also Thomas Jane, Pell James, Ashlee Simpson, and a vigorously masturbating Elijah Wood), while getting career-worst performances from most of the past-their-prime leads (Fraser and Dillon are terrible), the appalling, unwatchable PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES has absolutely nothing redeeming about it and offers zero entertainment value. There's just nothing else to say: this is a complete pile of dog shit. (R, 112 mins)
