Review of Chop Shop (2008) by Mjs M — 05 Jan 2009

As an amateur critic, I?m deprived a lot of things that my professional colleagues have access to, namely paychecks and advanced screenings. But another thing I miss out on is the film festival experience, the chance to hike out to places like Telluride and Toronto to watch small movies for hours on end, and to get a feel for what filmmakers who are more than a little bit outside of the Hollywood mainstream are doing. Of course I could just hike out to places like Cannes on my own? but the aforementioned lack of paychecks tends to get in the way of that. But, while I?ve never been to the Sundance film festival, I do get the Sundance channel on my cable service, and that?s where I discovered a beautiful little film called Man Push Cart.

Man Push Cart was a very small film set on the streets of New York; it followed an Iranian immigrant working out of a vending cart as he simply tried to make ends meet. It was a very good meditation on the American Dream. Man Push Cart introduced (a few) audiences to a very talented director named Ramin Bahrani, a man who is now one of the most promising talents in the independent film world. Earlier this year Bahrani released his second film, another slice of life about someone trying to survive in an unsavory area of New York called Chop Shop.

The film follows Ale (Alejandro Polanco), a pre-adolescent orphan working at and living in the attic of a seedy Chop Shop in Queens. Ale has never gone to school, with no intention of being scooped up by child protective services his only means of survival is a life of (very) petty crime. He first works at the Chop Shop, but his criminal activity escalates throughout the film to include the sale of bootleg DVDs to theft. One day he learns that his sixteen year old sister Izzy (Isamar Gonzales) is going to come live with him in the Chop Shop attic. Once they reunite Ale tells her of an opportunity he has to buy a vending van, an object that could change their lives.

Bahrani clearly takes inspiration from the Italian neorealists with his approach to filmmaking. He shows the stark realities of poor areas with stark, documentary-like filmmaking in real locations and from the use of non-actors. The grainy photography that categorized the movement back in the day has been replaced by sharp digital photography. I?ve come to admire the video-like look of some digital photography, it?s not pretty but it has the ability to see the world the way the human eye does, it?s stark, untouched, un-calculated; it?s the perfect medium for something that?s as gritty as the material here.

The non-actors are also pretty good here, in that way non actors can be. Alejandro Polanco is consistently articulate and believable in his role as a street urchin, Isamar Gonzales isn?t quite as good as his sister, but she doesn?t hurt the film at all. Ahmad Razvi, who played the lead character in Man Push Cart, has a supporting role here. Razvi is a very good screen presence and it?s nice to see him getting more work (these two films are his only credited roles). A kid named Carlos Zapata plays Ale?s friend and fellow street kid.

Chop Shop is a sad film, but it isn?t depressing. The world Ale lives in is a very unpleasant place for a kid to be in, but it doesn?t dwell on his misery, rather it?s about his struggle to improve his life through day to day work and saving. It?s another meditation on the American Dream from Ramin Bahrani, and I can?t wait to see what this man makes next.