CASH ONLY is an incredible thriller that follows a man trying to move heaven and earth to save his daughter when she is kidnapped by a group of underworld thugs. Set in an Albanian neighborhood of Detroit, Elvis Martini (Nickola Shreli, who also wrote the screenplay) is struggling to keep it together following the death of his wife, but is barely hanging on. He owes money on his mortgage, he is in debt to bookies, his career as a landlord for a shitty apartment complex isn’t exactly thriving, his tenants are super shady, and he owes tuition money to his daughter’s school.
When an opportunity for some easy cash comes his way, he jumps on it, hoping to escape the most immediate of his crushing debt. He steals some ill-gotten funds from a tenant he is evicting and uses it to alleviate the most present of his worries. Until he realizes that the stolen money didn’t really belong to his tenant after all – it belonged to an underworld crime lord. A depraved gangster who has no qualms about retrieving what’s his by any means necessary. When Elvis’ daughter is kidnapped and held under the demand that he repay the lost sum in 24 hours, he has to make the impossible happen to get her back.
CASH ONLY really scores points with its character development. We spend a good deal of time with Elvis before things even head south, getting to know him, seeing his daily routine, his neighborhood and the people in his life. All this comes together to paint a picture of a man just trying to get by. We see his challenges and struggles. The loss of his wife is still very fresh and present. And he holds a great amount of guilt for her passing. His life is nothing fancy, and he skirts into questionable territory, but he does his best to provide for his daughter – the most important thing is his life. Sure, he can’t be there for her the way he wants to, but he’s doing his damnedest to try.
It is this character build that makes the second half of the movie so rewarding and badass. Not only does Shreli make Elvis someone that we can sympathize and side with, but when the shit hits the fan and he has to do anything within his power to reclaim his daughter, we understand where that is coming from. We have seen their relationship, we have witnessed him trying to do right by her, even though he makes a tough living, and we understand his desperation. And desperation is exactly what we’re seeing. That moment when he becomes stretched so thin as he sees the magnitude of his predicament and realizes how it was all his fault and how his daughter might suffer for it. And the determination to do anything to prevent that. This isn’t Liam Neeson kicking and punching his way through a gazillion assholes. This is a regular dude (a tough dude, sure), but a dude just trying to use his limited means, connections and skills and will do anything that needs to be done. It’s what makes this film stand out among similar crime stories. Yes, our protagonist accidentally did something kind of stupid and got in bad with the wrong people. But his motivation for making good on that situation is led by his love for his daughter, and his desire to preserve what is left of his family.
Schreli is incredibly great in capturing that desperation and that drive. Elvis isn’t a criminal. He is connected to some shady practices, but he doesn’t have a network of thugs and goons to call upon to back him up. It’s just him. He’s alone, he’s nobody special, and he has found himself in an impossible situation.
When the film finally reaches its climax and we get to meet Dino (Stivi Paskoski), the bastard mob boss that Elvis has crossed, he is every bit the monster we hoped he would be. Pakoski makes character live up to every expectation that we have for a gutter dirtbag – unscrupulous, terrifying and completely unpredictable. There is something very satisfying about holding your breath along with Elvis, realizing that shit just got real and there is not a damn thing to be done about it. Sometimes you just have to walk into the lion’s den and face whatever might be waiting for you there.
