Film

Chop Shop (2007)

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Movie review

From Time Out Chicago

Garnering deserved comparisons to the Italian neorealists, Bahrani—here and in 2006’s Man Push Cart—has turned his camera on New York’s service class, chronicling a world at once instantly recognizable and utterly marginalized. In Chop Shop, the hero is Ale (pronounced “Ah-lay,” played by Polanco), a young teen who lives in the shadow of Shea Stadium without parents or rules; he rents a closet-size apartment with his sister (Gonzales), whose mysterious income, he eventually learns, comes from prostitution. Armed with little but attitude, Ale scrapes out a bare-knuckle existence; he sells candy on the subway and steals hubcaps, bartering them to the chop shop where he sometimes helps with polishing. The shop’s proprietor—played by Cart’s Razvi—serves as a sort of mentor.

Much as Cart’s street vendor saw his coffee stand as a ticket to the American Dream, so Ale ultimately invests everything he has in a beat-up food truck, which he plans to turn into a profitable business. If Chop Shop lacks the earlier film’s surreal, predawn imagery, its snapshot of class mobility at its most molasses-paced is startlingly real. With his abundance of pluck and lack of education, Ale finds that adults will treat him—or cheat him—just as they would a grown-up. This isn’t a movie about his resilience, but simply his existence. It makes you eager to see which neighborhood Bahrani will train his eye on next.