TRIPLE 9 (US - 2016) Directed by John Hillcoat. Written by Matt Cook. Cast: Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Paul, Clifton Collins Jr., Norman Reedus, Teresa Palmer, Michael K. Williams, Gal Gadot, Michelle Ang, Terence Rosemore, Luis Da Silva Jr, E. Roger Mitchell, Igor Komar. (R, 114 mins) Though it openly worships at the altar of Michael Mann classics like 1981's THIEF and 1995's HEAT, along with other dirty cop movies like 2001's TRAINING DAY, 2002's DARK BLUE, and 2008's STREET KINGS, TRIPLE 9 earns its place as one of the better offerings in a genre that's usually relegated to VOD and DTV these days. Debuting screenwriter Matt Cook's script is reminiscent of vintage David Ayer, who wrote TRAINING DAY, DARK BLUE, and END OF WATCH, and directed STREET KINGS before the fuckin' motherfucker fuckin' became a fuckin' ridiculous fuckin' one-note fuckin' self-fuckin'-parody of him-fuckin'-self, but with an unusual cast, crackling direction by Australian John Hillcoat (THE PROPOSITION, THE ROAD, LAWLESS), and an endlessly driving, throbbing, synthy John Carpenter-style score by Trent Reznor collaborator Atticus Ross, TRIPLE 9 overcomes its familiarities and occasional contrivances to emerge a gritty, fast-paced, and intense cop thriller.
The film opens with a highly-coordinated, HEAT-derived robbery of one safety-deposit box at a downtown Atlanta bank. The getaway goes to shit when some out-in-the-open money stashed away by one of them has a dye-pack explode in the speeding SUV. The idiot who improvised is crew's requisite hapless fuck-up Gabe (Aaron Paul), brought into the fold by his older brother Russell (Norman Reedus, cast radically against type as "Norman Reedus"). The ringleader is Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a former black-ops mercenary who did some work in the Middle East with Russell. Also in the group are two dirty cops, the gang unit's Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie) and homicide's Franco Rodriguez (Clifton Collins Jr). They're all in the employ of ruthless Russian-Jewish mob boss Irina Vlaslov (Oscar-winner and seven-time nominee Kate Winslet, relishing a chance to ham it up with a hairsprayed '80s helmet of a mob wife hairdo), who assumed control of her organization when her powerful and feared husband Vassili (Igor Komar) was thrown into a Russian gulag under the orders of Vladimir Putin himself. Complicating matters is Michael fathering a child with Irina's younger, dim-witted, endlessly-clubbing sister Elena (Gal Gadot), which keeps him a tight leash with Irina and her ruthless, yarmulke-sporting enforcers. Needing some homeland security files as part of a secret deal with the FBI that will get Vassili moved to Israel, Irina sends Elena off to Tel Aviv with Michael's son and refuses to pay him and his crew for their work until they pull off this One Last Job--getting what she needs from a locked-down government building--a job that's so impossible that the only way Belmont and Rodriguez can see getting it done is by calling a 9-9-9 over the radio--a "Triple 9" meaning "officer down"--which will effectively distract every available cop in Atlanta by sending them ot the scene of the cop killing, buying them some much-needed extra time. And Belmont has the perfect victim in his new partner Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), a loner cop from a cushier suburban post--and the nephew of the grizzled, alcoholic, pot-smoking lead investigator (Woody Harrelson) on the opening heist--who immediately clashes with Belmont and the other cops in the gang unit.
Carrying a large ensemble and enough plot for an entire third season of TRUE DETECTIVE, TRIPLE 9 trucks along at such a relentless clip that you don't have time to question the little problems that come up (how Gabe ends up at that particular place at that time, for instance). There's little here you haven't seen before, but its nihilistic tone puts it squarely in Hillcoat's wheelhouse, and even the predictable things that take place end up happening in unpredictable ways, be it at a different time than you expect or to a different person than you anticipate. Hillcoat stages several nail-biting sequences--the opening robbery, Belmont arriving at work late the morning of the first robbery and failing to notice a small spatter of red dye on his pants, a raid on a gang compound in the projects, a chase down the traffic-jammed downtown Atlanta freeway (there's some aerial shots of downtown and a second-unit shot of the famed Stone Mountain carving, though on the whole, he doesn't make great use of Atlanta locations like, say, SHARKY'S MACHINE). The cast is committed across the board (Ejiofor and Affleck are excellent), with Winslet not necessarily succeeding as a fearsome antagonist, but seeing her in such a bizarre role so far outside her comfort zone makes her performance fascinating. She enthusiastically sinks her teeth into her Boris & Natasha accent and is almost freakish at times, so much so that Michael K. Williams' (BOARDWALK EMPIRE's Chalky White) brief appearance as a cross-dressing male prostitute and Harrelson playing a scene in a wolf's mask are the second and third strangest sights on display. Harrelson seems to be existing in a different film altogether throughout, though not in a bad way. He's approaching it from a different angle than his co-stars and seems to have been given some wide latitude to Woody it up a bit, with his character such a train wreck--showing up to work drunk and high, sifting through trash bags at crime scenes to find the tiniest remnants of a spliff to openly blaze up in front of the other cops he's supervising--that it seems impossible that he'd still have a job. TRIPLE 9 doesn't exactly forge a new path in the annals of cop vs. criminal movies, but it's riveting entertainment, the kind of film that's going to be in heavy cable rotation for the next several decades, and you'll end up watching it every time you stumble upon it.
STRETCH (US - 2014) Written and directed by Joe Carnahan. Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ed Helms, James Badge Dale, Brooklyn Decker, Jessica Alba, Chris Pine, Ray Liotta, David Hasselhoff, Norman Reedus, Randy Couture, Shaun Toub, Ben Bray, Jason Mantzoukas, Kevin Bigley. (R, 94 mins)
VOD has proven to be a viable distribution channel in our post-SNOWPIERCER world, and Universal is hoping to replicate The Weinstein Company's unintended phenomenon with Joe Carnahan's STRETCH. Abruptly yanked from the schedule just a few weeks before its planned March 2014 release, STRETCH was one of several titles produced by Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions (INSIDIOUS, SINISTER) that distributor Universal decided to leave languishing in limbo on the shelf, along with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY creator Oren Peli's AREA 51 (completed in 2009) and Joe Johnston's thriller NOT SAFE FOR WORK (completed in 2012), among others (STRETCH's time gathering dust was relatively brief, having wrapped in 2013). Universal hasn't said much about the shelving of these films, but it's mainly that the typical Blumhouse production costs $5 million or less, and that Universal balked at spending "$25 to $30 million" to market and distribute the films. It's now the major studio mindset that anything less than a $150 million take at the box office is a flop and movies grossing $30 million domestically simply aren't worth releasing in theaters anymore. There's no such thing as a moderate hit. Something's either a blockbuster or it's a bomb and in that climate, there's no in-between. Outspoken NARC and SMOKIN' ACES director Carnahan wasn't happy with Universal's decision, especially since he had a proven track record after he helmed a blockbuster with 2010's THE A-TEAM and had a decent-sized hit with the critically-acclaimed 2012 Liam Neeson vehicle THE GREY, which "only" grossed $51 million. When Universal shelved STRETCH earlier this year, they allowed Blum the chance to shop it around to other distributors, and when no one bit, the rights reverted back to Universal, and seeing the success of SNOWPIERCER, they opted to release it on VOD rather than dumping it straight-to-DVD. In interviews leading up to STRETCH's VOD debut, Carnahan has more or less taken an "It is what it is" approach to the release, expressing his disappointment that Universal abandoned what he considers his best film thus far. Carnahan is so sure that moviegoers will dig STRETCH that he posted messages on Facebook and Twitter promising that if you didn't enjoy STRETCH and can send him a pic proving you paid to watch it, he'll personally refund your money.
Like the word-of-mouth buzz with SNOWPIERCER and it being The Little Movie That Could, all of Carnahan's incessant yapping only serves to publicize STRETCH, though you have to applaud him for standing by his work and his in-your-face enthusiasm in making sure people know about it. It's too bad STRETCH isn't going to be another SNOWPIERCER, nor is it Carnahan's best film (that would be NARC). But then, the filmmaker has always straddled the line between maverick and loudmouth, better known for the films he didn't make--walking off of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III during pre-production, the collapsed DEATH WISH remake with Liam Neeson, and his dream project, an adaptation of James Ellroy's 1992 noir novel White Jazz--than the ones he's made. Carnahan's an enthusiastic filmmaker with a terrific sense of humor in his writing, and one of the few people making generally smart, no-nonsense, manly movies for men in the old-school tradition of Walter Hill. Sometimes he just talks too much.
STRETCH is entertaining if a bit slight, definitely in the over-the-top style of SMOKIN' ACES, but set in a typically excessive vision of L.A. Failed actor Kevin Bryzkowski (Patrick Wilson), who unsuccessfully tried to market himself as "Kai Bruno" before giving up after losing a guest role on CSI: MIAMI and taking a job as a limo driver, has kicked his coke, booze, and gambling habit and gotten over his ex-girlfriend (Brooklyn Decker) dumping him for the quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. He's been paying off a $12K debt to his bookie Iggy (Ben Bray), who's been bought out by some Cantonese gangsters who want the remaining $6000 he owes by midnight. Kevin, or "Stretch" as he's known to his friends, is on thin ice with his boss (Shaun Toub), who's paid guys to hack into the computer system of rival limo company Cossack, run by a hair-metal-coiffed hulk known as "The Jovi" (Randy Couture) so they can steal their gigs. Stretch gets one-upped by the Jovi when he's late picking up David Hasselhoff ("You don't have any respect for the Hoff!" he scolds Stretch), so he gets revenge by jacking the Jovi's next client, Carnahan regular Ray Liotta, from a movie set. Liotta leaves a prop gun and a fake badge from the movie behind, and Stretch doesn't get it back to the set before stealing the Jovi's next pickup: insane, cokehead billionaire Roger Karos (an unrecognizable Chris Pine). Karos has Stretch drop him off at an EYES WIDE SHUT-type sex party while he sends him off on a series of dangerous errands throughout L.A., involving a money pickup, a drug deal, and an undercover FBI agent (James Badge Dale), in exchange for a $6000 tip to clear his debt, and all the while Stretch is pursued by Iggy's goons, forced to pose as hard-assed LAPD cop "Raymond Liotta," and is harangued by the taunting ghost of his mentor, legendary limo driver Karl With a K (Ed Helms), who got so fed up with the business that he blew his brains out in mid-job, "marking the first time in 20 years that someone else had to clean his limo."
Carnahan packs a lot of plot into STRETCH's 94 minutes, and most of it works. Wilson has rarely been this loose onscreen before, but that's nothing compared to the way Pine (uncredited, but arguably the second lead) dives headfirst into his role with no concern for his image or any modicum of good taste. It's a literally balls-out performance, as he's first seen skydiving in nothing but a vest and a jockstrap, landing on top of Stretch's limo as Carnahan introduces him via a taint shot as his exposed scrotum slides down the front windshield. Yeah, STRETCH is that kind of a movie. Pine's overtly demonic Karos (often shot in reddish Italian horror lighting) seduces the desperate Stretch with the promise of $6000, with the resulting AFTER HOURS-inspired parade of grotesqueries an obvious metaphor for the way the power players of L.A. use, abuse, chew up, and spit out generally decent people like Stretch (or, if you expand on it, Hollywood dicking over well-meaning filmmakers like, oh I dunno, Joe Carnahan). Elsewhere, Karos snorts mountains of blow and cavorts with an array of high-class prostitutes, to whom he's also known as "Captain Fisty." Liotta, who also had a memorable cameo as himself in WANDERLUST, is very funny as an alternate universe, asshole version of "Ray Liotta," getting an assistant's name wrong and flat-out admitting "I don't give a fuck" when he's corrected, and being furiously indignant over the Jovi picking up "a TV actor" instead of him, even though he has no idea who Hasselhoff is ("Don't know him...should I?") or what KNIGHT RIDER and BAYWATCH are ("A talking car? What the fuck?"). Norman Reedus also has an inspired bit as himself, in a flashback where Karl With a K helps him cover up a motel room bloodbath ("Is that a severed penis?" Karl With a K asks). As funny as it can be, we've seen this sort-of "L.A. as immoral, hedonistic hellscape" motif a thousand times before, and despite some enthusiastic work by Wilson and Pine, some genuinely funny bits of offensive humor, and some periodic respites from the obnoxiousness courtesy of Jessica Alba as a limo dispatcher and Stretch's dependable Girl Friday, it frequently comes off as a Carnahan tantrum, and a louder, more aggressively garish version of John Landis' underrated 1985 gem INTO THE NIGHT. The actors are obviously having a good time, and it's worth a look on a slow night once it hits Redbox or Netflix Instant. Enough of it works that only a shameless asshole would ask Carnahan for their money back, but let's cut through the shit here: it's an offbeat little film that will find a minor cult following and probably enjoy a long future as the kind of movie you stop at while channel-surfing, but it wasn't going to be a hit in theaters.
UPDATE (10/21/2014)
As of 10/21/2014, STRETCH and three other shelved Blumhouse productions--NOT SAFE FOR WORK, the Stephen King adaptation MERCY, and the horror film MOCKINGBIRD (directed by THE STRANGERS' Bryan Bertino)--were released on DVD by Universal as Walmart exclusives.
One of the most acclaimed films at Sundance in 2013, IN A WORLD... is exactly the kind of movie that plays better at film festivals than in commercial release. It's pleasant, occasionally amusing, and it's made with the best intentions. There's nothing egregiously wrong with it, but it doesn't really do anything with its ideas and is rather slight and forgettable by the end. CHILDREN HOSPITAL's Lake Bell, a proven comic and dramatic performer who rarely gets the attention she deserves, writes, directs, and stars in this labor of love as Carol, a Los Angeles-based vocal coach who specializes in helping actors nail accents (she's introduced getting a voice mail from a sound mixer who needs her to work with Eva Longoria on a period film, as her Cockney accent "sounds like a retarded pirate"). She's successful in her field, but lives in the shadow of her legendary father Sam (Fred Melamud), a famed movie trailer voice who had a mentor in the late, great Don LaFontaine (Bell opens the film with a nice tribute to that great "In a world..." voice). She lives with Sam, a widower who promptly kicks her out so his one-year-younger-than-Carol girlfriend Jamie (Alexandra Holden) can move in. While working with Longoria in the studio where the actress has to re-loop her entire performance, Carol narrates a trailer as a goof, and she nails it so well that she finds herself in the running to voice the trailer for the Cameron Diaz blockbuster "AMAZON GAMES quadrilogy," which puts her in conflict with her dad and Gustav (Ken Marino), the other main voice in the trailer business.
Movie buffs will appreciate the occasional glimpses at the inner workings of the voiceover industry, but too much of IN A WORLD... is devoted to standard-issue rom-com stuff, with Carol falling for sound mixer Louis (Demetri Martin) and trying to patch things up between her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Moe (Rob Corddry) when concierge Dani fools around with AMAZON GAMES director and hotel guest Terence Pouncer (Jason O'Mara), plus some easy jabs at THE HUNGER GAMES and L.A. women with "sexy baby voices" who talk like every sentence ends with a question mark? Bell and Watkins have a nice sibling chemistry, Holden's Jamie is unpredictably handled in the way she legitimately loves Sam and is not just drawn by his fame, and Melamud has a voice that was made for trailers (Marino, however, does not), but the whole "female empowerment" message that Bell is going for is too heavy-handed by the end, and she can't resist the indie hipster crutch of using '70s and '80s hits ironically (Dani and Moe reconcile to the tune of Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line," and Carol and Louis' night out is a montage set to Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," for some reason). In the end, there's a few chuckles for film dorks, but that's ultimately the biggest problem. Bell got all of her cult comedy friends together (there's also supporting turns by Nick Offerman, Stephanie Allynne, Tig Notaro, and Jeff Garlin, plus Geena Davis as a ballbusting movie exec), and it grossed $3 million on 144 screens against a $1 million budget, but its appeal is too narrow. It feels like the kind of movie Tom Dicillo made in the '90s that nobody outside the industry gave a shit about. Bell is a charming and immensely likable actress, but IN A WORLD... too often comes off like little more than a rejected IFC pilot. (R, 93 mins)
SUNLIGHT JR. (US/UK - 2013)
Here's another example of a well-intentioned film that just has no chance once it's away from the secure and loving embrace of the film festival circuit. It was a major title at last year's Tribeca fest, and it's the kind of offering that the indie and the festival scene just eats up: gritty subject matter, socially and culturally relevant themes, name actors working for scale or less and getting their hands dirty on a pack-your-own-lunch labor of love that shows how serious they are about their craft...and it was ultimately given a zero-publicity VOD dumping while only playing on a few screens nationally. Written and directed by SHERRYBABY's Laurie Collyer, SUNLIGHT JR. stars Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon as Melissa and Richie, a severely down-on-their-luck Florida couple who've been beaten to shit by life: he's a hard-drinking paraplegic living disability check to disability check, fixing VCRs and siphoning gas from cars, and she's supporting them by scrambling for shifts at a rundown convenience store called Sunlight Jr., where she's routinely hassled by her stalker ex Justin (Norman Reedus), who demonstrated his love by routinely beating her and getting her hooked on prescription painkillers. They live in a fleabag motel but they're happy together, and that happiness intensifies when she discovers she's pregnant. But, since this is a depressing indie drama that could almost be called BLUE VALENTINE: THE LATER YEARS, that joy is short-lived as her asshole boss (Antoni Corone) threatens her job and Justin's behavior grows more menacing now that his restraining order's been lifted.
Watts, Dillon, and the film are moving along just fine until the pregnancy, when Collyer just starts piling on one misfortune after another in a way that crosses the line from realism into deck-stacking misery porn. The problems with her boss exist only to make the story take a more miserable turn. It's a corporate chain--as evidenced by a company HR rep visiting to administer drug tests--so there's no reason Melissa can't tell someone higher-up that she's being sexually harassed by her boss ("Are those pants wet because of me?" he asks Melissa after she walks to work in the rain), and his other managerial practices are flat-out abusive and intimidating. And given Justin's behavior, there's no valid reason for the restraining order to be lifted other than Collyer needs him to show up at Sunlight Jr to cause dramatic conflict and offer Melissa some painkillers. And later, when they're kicked out of the motel and have to move in with her alcoholic mother (Tess Harper) and her brood of unruly foster kids that she lets run wild so she can keep the foster care checks coming in, there's not only Richie's ramped-up boozing and the foster kids being bitten by bedbugs, but also the mom's asshole landlord--who else?--JUSTIN! To Collyer's credit, she doesn't turn Melissa and Richie into martyrs or succumb to white trash caricaturing, and she does a commendable job of capturing the atmosphere of crippling economic depression, shooting in locations that look like a desolate wasteland of homeless people, closed-down strip malls with weeds growing through the concrete, pawn shops, flea markets, and dive bars. Watts and Dillon are excellent until the plot developments start threatening to turn the characters into cardboard cutouts; Watts perseveres but Dillon can't do much with the clichéd arc undergone by Richie. SUNLIGHT JR sometimes falls victim to ham-fisted melodrama, but there's a lot of positives to be found with the performances, a very Ry Cooder-ish score by J. Mascis, and Collyer's compassionate depiction of a struggling underclass. (Unrated, 95 mins)
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)
