The Pawn (1998)

User Rating:

4.4/10   

Director:

Clay Borris

Writers:

Clay Borris (writer)
Ian Robertson (writer)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Crotch Shot | Independent Film

Cast

Greg Evigan	...	Ray
Sydney Penny	...	Megan
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Tony Curtis Blondell	...	Police Detective
Mark Ellis	...	Priest
Tony Lo Bianco
Layton Morrison	...	Doorman
Tom Pashkov	...	Mikael
Rob Stewart	...	Darcy Harlan

MPAA:

Rated R for violence and some sexuality.

Runtime:

88 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Germany:16 | USA:R

Not since Rocky IV has there been a movie so reliant on the binary opposition between the good all-American cop and the evil Russian mob

Somebody forgot to tell the makers of The Pawn that the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. ended ten years ago. Not since Rocky IV has there been a movie so reliant on the binary opposition between the good all-American cop and the evil Russian mob.

The flimsy plot goes something like this: good cop, Ray (Greg Evigan), decides to move to upstate New York, away from the stress of busy downtown New York. He's in need of a break after a standoff in which a young boy was killed. He returns home to find that it offers no relief. His small town has been swallowed by a growing Russian mob. If that was not cliché enough, some of the good guys who are closest to Ray, actually turn out to be bad. Ray must fight the mob and his own police force in order to save the day and bring peace and security back to the United States.

There isn't a whole lot that's good in this movie. Director Clay Borris does deserve credit for setting up some great looking shots. Although the climactic shootout sequence has about as much suspense as a Sunday drive, it at least looks good. The cuts and edits are slick, without being distracting.

The acting in The Pawn is downright embarrassing. The actors appear to be stiffer than a stick and spit out their lines as though they are some vile poison. It doesn't help that they're working with a pitiful script. Everything is entirely obvious – so much so that The Pawn could almost be watched as a satire of the paranoid anti-Russian films of the Cold War era – but it can't be a satire if it's not intentional. This is supposed to be a thriller. Note to the producers of The Pawn: thrillers work better if they keep you guessing.

The only thinking this movie's going to make you do is the subtraction you'll be working out when you check your watch to figure out how much longer until the closing credits. So curl up and get comfy if you're going to watch this one, because 90 minutes can seem like forever when you're watching a bad movie. Believe me, The Pawn refreshed my memory on that point.