Wayne Kramer thankfully refuses to cloak his excessiveness in hedge-betting self-consciousness and the result is a gratifyingly disreputable B-movie blow out.
The critics hated it but I dug it. I liked the cast, the disturbing and very strange story and the character, despite being awful, terrible people, were entertaining in their own, unique way. And how often are you going to see pretty boy Paul Walker as a racist moron?
"Hee Haw” meets “Pulp Fiction” at the meth lab: That describes the style of Pawn Shop Chronicles, a hillbilly grindhouse yawp of a movie that belches in your face and leaves a sour stink.
Director Wayne Kramer (Running Scared, Crossing Over) makes plain his cartoon-comedy intentions early and often via comic-book-panel-style title cards. The presiding atmosphere of over-the-top zaniness, however, is of a broad, banal sort involving little people, rampant nudity, and quasi-religious nonsense.
It’s all very first draft, with a layer of supernatural permeating the events that suggests added attempts to connect three wildly disparate storylines.
It was actually a fairly good movie. The acting was good, the cinematography was superb, the stories for each segments were good even though the third one was the weakest, the cast was impressive and the way the stories were all linked together was really well done. It's not the greatest anthology, but it's still fairly good and entertaining.
TARENTINO storytelling, mirroring Pulp Fiction in every way except for originality. If you like Pulp Fiction, watching this will drive you mad as you will notice/recognize key elements brazenly ripped off. It strings together seemingly unconnnected storylines into a story. Just as Pulp Fiction, in this some of the storylines more interesting than others-certainly more humorous. Walker was good but his appearance short. Unfortunatly Frasier seems to get most of the play in the 2nd half of the movie which makes this movie even worse.
Director Wayne Kramer once tried to make an insanely over-the-top action movie, Running Scared (also starring Walker), which many admired for its sheer over-the-topness. But then Kramer detoured for the completely earnest (and awful) immigration drama Crossing Over, which proves a point: Kramer isn't going over the top for any honest, organic reason but rather as a cold, calculated exercise. It's the same with PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES, though this time he and screenwriter Adam Minarovich very obviously draw their empty inspiration from Pulp Fiction. So the movie is crazy and agitated and loud and full of left turns and, yes, over-the-top but these things don't add up to anything that could be called a good movie. There are a couple of shock-based laughs early on, but then the laughs dry up, as do the thrills and the tingles. It's just horrifying and soul-deadening. All of that said, D'Onofrio gives a very interesting performance as the slightly befuddled pawn shop proprietor.