Cash For Gold

You will want to keep your ticket for the exceptional pawn shop Christmas drama Cash For Gold, written by Deborah Puette and directed by Puette and Robert Enriquez. Christmas is coming, and Grace (Deborah Puette) is desperate, as she has been on her own since her Afghanistan vet husband Billy (John Pollomo) died. She is behind on the mortgage, her car almost got repoed with her toddler son, Noah (Sawyer Gacka), in it, and she just got fired for cussing out a bar owner for not giving her more shifts.

Grace sure could use a drink, but she can’t drink anymore, much to the chagrin of her old drinking buddies, like Noah’s godfather Mikey (David Sullivan). Mikey was best buds with Billy, but he doesn’t come around to see Noah anymore, even though the kid misses him. Mikey just shows up at the bar owned by Robby (Jeff Kober), where Grace works to buy suitcases of beer and do shots of Jack Daniels before 10 in the morning. Grace depends on her mother-in-law Boots (JoBeth Williams) to look after Noah while she works, even though she feels Boots despises her.

“…the Christmas where the apocalypse is just one car not starting away…”

However, the f*****g car won’t start, and Grace is lucky enough to get a jump from the hunky new guy, Eric (Andrew J. West), who moved in next door. Grace drops Noah off and goes to the pawn shop in town to sell the last of her jewelry. The man behind the counter, Hasan (Farshad Farahat), feels sorry for Grace and tries to make her a good deal but is forbidden by his father, the store owner Mohammad (Marcelo Tubert). Hasan tries to sneak her some extra money, but Grace takes it. However, she comes back later with something else in mind. Grace wants to work in the pawn shop and asks for a job, much to the befuddlement of Hasan and his father.

Weather-wise, there is a white Christmas and a green Christmas. Movie-wise, there is also red Christmas for bloody action and black Christmas for holiday horror. There is even the odd ultraviolet Christmas for the rare sci-fi yuletider. Gritty Christmas is an entirely different beast altogether. Gritty is more like the carol “Please Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas.” Gritty is not just having to work on Christmas; it is trying to work the holiday on purpose because ends are not meeting.

Gritty is the spilled ashtrays on the floor along with the pine needles and tinsel. Gritty is the Christmas where the apocalypse is just one car not starting away, which is totally f*****g real for over half of the country and growing. This is why Cash For Gold is such a fresh breath of Christmas movie air. Puette and Enriquez even go along with some of the Christmas rom-com tropes to hang their steel trap ornaments on. Rarely has the Christmas hunk next door been so successfully subverted. Rarely, too, have so many harsh realities of the rust noose nightmare of the Midwest seen their way into a movie.