Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more

 

Chop Shop (2007)

Director: Ramin Bahrani

4

Critics' rating

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out New York

The “Iron Triangle” area of Queens is made up of a 13-block stretch of junkyards, body shops and random scrap heaps. You don’t have to be intimate with the outer borough, however, to recognize the people who inhabit Ramin Bahrani’s sophomore feature. The shady characters and oil-stained shysters who call this place home are the same faces you’d see on any city’s desolation row; Ale (Polanco), the movie’s 12-year-old hustler hero, will seem familiar to both Rossellini fans and G train commuters. Working for one of the shop owners, Ale sweeps floors and steers potential customers toward his boss’s garage in order to earn room and board. After hours, he helps another IT resident (Razvi) strip stolen cars for spare parts. The boy is saving up his wages so he can buy a broken-down lunch truck and hopefully keep his older sister (Gonzales) from becoming just another girl who services passing johns for petty change. Welcome to a hard-knock life.

Having already demonstrated a knack for capturing Manhattan’s street-vendor diaspora in Man Push Cart, Bahrani turns his keen eye toward another working-class subculture and again proves that he’s a virtually peerless New York neorealist. Like his first film, Chop Shop suffers from the occasional broad stroke—framing Ale in the shadows of nearby Shea Stadium may be geographically correct, but it’s also the most obvious of metaphors. Still, the director’s ability to milk humanism from dire environments trumps the heavy-handed touches. The movie’s climactic suggestion of liberation couldn’t be more of a throwaway moment, or more perfectly rendered.

Author: David Fear 2008-02-26 17:11:20

Time Out New York Issue 648: February 28–March 6, 2008


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Cast: Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales, Rob Sowulski, Ahmad Razvi full cast

Rated: NR

Duration: 84 mins

US Release: Feb 27 2008




Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.