Pawn (2013)

That's the perfect example of what the new wave crime flick genre may offer from time to time. A clever story of rotten cops, with of course Ray Liotta. This actor is to rotten cops the same Roy Rogers was to singing cowboys. The editing scheme reminds me PULP FICTION and the rotten cops scheme THE NEGOTIATOR.I Wonder why the hell the armed robbers are unmasked to pull their petty heist in the restaurant. Phony petty heist. I regret the unbereable happy ending only put here for sissies. And also I find the story maybe too much smart, complicated for me. But all this doesn't make it a run of the mill feature.

One quiet night at the diner is the start of a thrilling 90 minutes. I just loved this right from the start. It keeps the tension for ore than an hour, and though it's multi layered I didn't find it difficult to understand or be engaged in. A good cast is doing a great job. Stephen Lang, Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Ronald Guttman, Michael Sciklis all doing their job.The film starts off with a cop (Forest Whitaker) coming into a diner some minutes before midnight. He right away senses there's something wrong. He expects an unusual situation, but not like this... Minutes before, there's been action at the diner. What is happening? Who's behind it? The start reminded me a lot of the tension in the classic Dog Day Afternoon.The problem is that the film doesn't end in the exciting way it starts. Still I'll give bonus for the first hour. A better finish to the manuscript, and another half an hour would have done it. Such a pity it wasn't quality all way through!

It should be illegal for this "director' to ever get near a camera again. Chock full of stars, this 'thing' never gets off the ground. The erratic, haphazard cutting of the narrative makes this a complete mess to watch. The values are all over the place. I figure they had a pretty flat movie when they finished cutting it and figured 'what the hell?' might as well chop it up using a lot of elliptical cuts. The problem is that there has to be a reason - not just for the hell of it. Seeing the same scenes over and over again is just boring.It looked like it was shot on video. Really bad, horrible lighting; non existent production design; and no sound design. This needed a good music bed pretty badly! The performances were hampered by the lack of it. It's a shame since there is such a waste of fine talent. The story could have gone through a few more rewrites. A little too much needless exposition in the dialogue. If you go out and sit next to people you learn how they talk so you don't write lines like "I've made mistakes and I've paid for them." Oi vey! It's like someone coming over to your house and greets you by saying "I'm going to shake your hand and say hello."I could be wrong about this movie since it made a whopping $2,000 at the box office.

Pawn, is a surprisingly grisly movie that deserves a top ranking with straight to video releases. The performances aren't as terrible as most of these types of films consist of and you really get invested into the characters. For such a film, it's screenplay isn't as full with stale or artificial lines and it actually embodies it's characters. On paper the plot seems extremely stale/generic but with it's execution of a fresh style and simplicity it ends up to transform. Whitaker and Liota's role are really minor roles but it's such a treat to see them in a film like this. The plot is a short term one but the film makes it work by analyzing every single detail, so I dare you to find a plot hole. With an over average script that contains a scene of really smart symbolism, the actors can not really mess it up. Action wise the film does not shy away, probably due to the fact of the directors background in being a cinematographer for the Saw films. For a crime/robbery flick it isn't as brainless as you could have been led to believe and it really captures the scene in a full scale. Overall, the film is an acceptable straight to video release that contains sudden twists, fresh plot, and great character development