“Cash for Gold” (2024) expands the 2013 short film about Grace (Deborah Puette, who also codirects and writes), a widow and mother of her son, Noah (Sawyer Gacka), nicknamed Bean. With Christmas coming and all the bills overdue, Grace is desperate for some cash, so she goes to the only pawn shop, Cash for Gold USA, in her small Minnesota town. She meets the soft-hearted Hasan (Farshad Farahat), who runs the business with his father, Mohammad (Marcelo Tubert). When they decide to put up a help wanted sign, Grace jumps at the opportunity for steady employment as their handyman. They change each other’s lives forever.
Some movies are meant for the big screen, and some feel perfect for television. “Cash for Gold” belongs in the latter category, and in the past, would find a fitting home on broadcast television on a Sunday night. A lot happens in a little bit of time. It has a checklist the comparable length of a CVS receipt with each character’s list of serious woes so there are real stakes at play. For example, Grace’s home is in danger of foreclosing. Her car could get repossessed. There is little to no food in the house. Unable to get a full-time job, she begs for shifts at different bars, which is particularly perilous for an alcoholic. Bean has asthma, and the movie’s biggest surprise is that he did not have to get rushed to the hospital. No, his brush with death is way more dramatic to ramp up the family melodrama. The hits keep coming for Grace, but everything gets resolved in the end with a tidy bow like a Christmas present to the viewers at home thanks to the Iranian immigrants who provide the only stability that she has ever had.
“Cash for Gold” is Puette’s first writing gig so even though she lays it on thick, her inclinations are well-intentioned and overall realistic: Americans have more in common with immigrants than they may believe because life is hard for everyone. The variety lies in the type of rocks that you lug around in your bag: loss, drug addiction, alcoholism, xenophobia, financial woes, etc. It is like an Afterschool Special for adults. Grace is likeable because the odds are stacked against her, and she is hard working, upbeat and shining bright. Mohammad sees her as an opportunity to refurbish her store and their lives, and it works. Grace gets them out of their routine, and they start to engage with the community, which only becomes an issue for one denizen who shares a complicated history with Grace. Puette added a nice touch to show that Grace is not the first person to try and welcome the Iranian immigrants, but the first that the father notices, which enables them to accept hospitality. Also, it was a relief when Puette highlights the sociological disparities which would make them incompatible and not travel in the same circles if Grace was in Iran. In America, everyone is equal and has an opportunity to hit rock bottom in terms of potential versus results. Puette dances really close to the line regarding whether there is romantic potential, but it is just implied, not fulfilled.
What goes up must come down so of course there is a point where Grace is in danger of losing it all. The more time that Grace spends away from the father and son, the less interesting “Cash for Gold” becomes. They are the heart of the movie, and the rest of the characters feel like two-dimensional archetypes albeit sympathetic, well-acted archetypes. There are the eager-to-help new neighbors from Florida: Eric (Andrew J. West), Carly (Emily Vere Nicoli), and their kids, Cody (Indiana Arnold) and Cassidy (Zoey Rassmussen). Grace’s in-laws, Boots (Jo Beth Williams) and Shelley (Gary Liubakka), provide childcare while Grace works double shifts. Godfather Mikey (David Sullivan) misses hanging out with Grace but finds it too hard to visit her at home because he misses his best friend, her deceased husband, an Army vet who served in Afghanistan, Billy (John Pollono). Even the car repo man, Casey (Andrew Wheeler), is endearing and human. If there was one actor that you would not expect in such a line up, it is Jeff Kober, who is a staple in television horror and sci-fi hits like “The Walking Dead,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The X-Files,” “The Pretender” and “Kindred: The Embraced.” Kober plays Grace’s other boss, and if you do not recognize him, then you would not raise an eyebrow at his appearance since he fits in nicely as the nicest bartender/proprietor ever, but if you do recognize him, you may expect a more dramatic, sinister tone shift. The man is a legend, and it is great to see one of his characters be chill and read a book.
The visuals are a smidge heavy-handed. The American flag appears in a lot of scenes, and “Cash for Gold,” we get the message. The widow of an Afghanistan war vet should not be scraping by. The most cheesy, American dream shot is the reflection in the store window right where the Help Wanted sign gets placed in the storefront window, but the flag in the backroom office seems random though I’ve been known to have the odd American flag around the house in unexpected places so who am I to judge? The visual metaphor of winter landscapes to reflect that a place is inhospitable, barren place for women and children is overdone, but it could work for people who do not watch a lot of movies. Besides it is Christmas in Minnesota. It is supposed to snow.
One criticism would stick if you noticed it. Grace has a pattern of talking to a man, and a woman outside of the frame is interrupting and trying to get the guy’s attention. If it did not happen twice, it would be easy to miss that Grace does not talk to women that much, which created an inadvertent bad impression. In the neighbors’ case, the husband approached her first, but most women know that if a man offers to watch your kid, and a woman is in the house, it is likely that the woman could end up doing the heavy lifting so would not Grace talk to both once she was ready to accept the offer? Maybe it is the point because Nicoli plays it perfectly and is so annoyed as Carly should be. Do not voluntold your already burdened wife with more work. Grace comes across as a pick me and a little entitled though her desperate circumstances makes it easier to excuse.
“Cash for Gold” tries to do too much and would have benefitted if the filmmakers scaled back on the wild swing towards melodrama and let the quotidian human connection and humdrum tribulations dominate. Fortune favors the bold, and their ambition to solve all of America’s ills in one movie is a laudable one, but to succeed at healing what ails us, it is important to remember that the division’s cause took hundreds of years to result in today’s problems so take it slow. The French still win at depicting the rhythm of ordinary life in the shadow of grief. Solid effort.
