Review of Chop Shop (2008) by Heather M — 24 Jun 2008

One of the few American "indie" films that don't hide behind easy quirkiness that they have nothing to say, either in terms of content or film aesthetics. It's hard not to think of the Italian neorealist film, but also Ken Loach, esp.

Sweet 16, which also features a "kid" trying to come up with cash to buy a van (or a trailer, in the case of Loach's film) in order to stabilize his life (through stabilizing his family).

But such comparisons go only so far; Chop Shop stands on its own feet, not least because of the way it renders the working class/immigrant/low level crime environment that's only minutes away from one of the richest places in the world.

But it does so without turning this environment into the "exotic", without rendering it as tourist snapshots for middle classes to feel good about to have visited once. While the ending is fairly "humanist" (and thus in line with Neorealism or Loach) it's difficult not to feel dirty having watched this film-not in the sense of having been violated or forced to watch sth.

one didn't want to see but in the sense of having been confronted with sth. one knows only all too well exists but prefers to ignore most of the time. This is not a fell-good movie, but it's a movie one can feel good about because of how it uses narrative and cinematic aspects to render visible (rather than "capture" or represent) life lived by people at the heart of a tremendously exploitative economic system.