Pawn (1999)

Red Vengeance

Strangely enough this movie came and went without much comment but I happened to stumble onto the DVD when I was in a Russian neighborhood nearby taking a bite at a tea lounge.

THE PAWN is well worth your time. It tells the outdated story of Cold War friction between Russian gangsters and the American cop they get on the wrong side of. Poor Greg Evigan plays the unlucky cop who starts out the movie in New York, accidentally pulling a gun on a young teen who winds up dead and Greg gets blamed.

The media makes sure he gets the stiff penanlty of having to leave Manhattan and hightail it home, one of those cute upstate towns like the one in which Humbert Humbert met Lolita (in fact it looks like the same one!) There, in the small town where he grew up in, young Gregh hopes to find peace of mind and forgiveness for accidentally killing the punk.

Except that . . . everything has changed. And not for the better either! As if his psychic wounds weren't burden enough for two people, Greg finds that the whole town has been infested, like roaches with true evil, Russian people. The Russian mafia has infiltrated Smallville and even Megan, the lovely young girl for whom Greg cherishes fond hopes, is in danger of, well, not becoming one of them, but turning into a victim of a white slave ring. I couldn't really follow the plot at this point, but it seems that a lot of the Russian mafia income depends on a sophisticated scheme by which innocent American teens are drugged, kidnapped, and shanghaied to Russia where they are forced to work as Vinyl Skirted prostitutes in Red Square. Megan is played by the talented young star Sydney Penny, the girl who played in THE THORN BIRDS as the young Meggie before she grew up to be Rachel Ward.

Here, she is all grown up and THE PAWN in a game of Red betrayal and counter-vigilante vengeance. Talented Clay Borris did the honors for direction. He is best known for PROM NIGHT IV: DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Canadian I assume. November 10, 2005

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